























MORE SERMONS ON 
BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


Rev. CLOVIS G. CHAPPELL, d.d. 




MORE SERMONS ON 
BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


.BY 

Rev. CLOVIS G. CHAPPELL, d.d. 

PASTOR, MT. VERNON PLAC& METHODIST EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH, SOUTH, WASHINGTON, D. C. 

Author of “The Village Tragedy ” “Sermons on Biblical 
Characters/* “The Modern Dance ” etc. 




NEW 'VWJT YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


A 



COPYRIGHT, 1923, 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS. II 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 




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CONTENTS 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE-GOMER 

A FULL MAN-STEPHEN . 

THE PAINTED FACE-JEZEBEL . 

COMING BY NIGHT-NICODEMUS 

THE SAINT’S SECRET-PAUL 

PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING-PAUL . 

THE FIELD PREACHER-THE LILY 

SCARECROWS-THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 

AN EASTER JOURNEY-CLEOPAS AND HIS 

COMPANION. 

A FINE ANIMAL-ESAU .... 

THE MODERN SLAVE-MARTHA . 

A GREAT WOMAN-THE SHUNAMMITE 

SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT-DAVID . 

A MURDERER’S PRAYER-DAVID . 

THE STARVATION COMMITTEE-THE FOUR 

LEPERS . ...... 

THE UNDYING FIRE-MOSES 


rAGE 

9 

22 


35 


l|8 L 

59 

68 

81 

92 


104 

115 

128 

140 

153 

165 


176 

189 





MORE SERMONS ON 
BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


MORE SERMONS ON 
BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


I 

THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 

Ho sea 6: 6 

“Mercy have I desired and not sacrifice.” George 
Adams Smith translates this: “^eal love have I desired 
and not sacrifice.” My story is one of the most pathetic 
ever told. It is a tragedy of the parsonage. It tells 
of a preacher’s broken heart and of a preacher’s broken 
home. The guise in which this terrible calamity came 
was the worst possible. It came through the unfaith¬ 
fulness of the preacher’s wife. Gomer might have been 
the happiest woman in Samaria. To her much was 
given. From her much was expected. But she turned 
away from her possible paradise to plunge into a pig¬ 
sty. 

The scene is the city of Samaria. Jeroboam II is 
king, and the era is one of great prosperity. It is also 
one of luxury and of debauchery and of open and dis¬ 
gusting vice. Society is becoming more and more 
rotten. Ten years before Amos had spoken in frank 
and awful plainness of coming ruin. But Samaria 
had not heeded. It had continued on its downward way 

as if greedy for its own destruction. 

9 


10 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


N"ow it was in this city that Hosea lived and 
preached. He was a man deeply patriotic and gen¬ 
uinely religious. He had the vision of a poet and 
the devotion of a saint. It was here he met and loved 
a girl named Gomer. She was in, and, doubtless, of 
this flippant and wicked society of Samaria. How he 
came to meet her and to fall in love with her we are 
not told. It is very evident, however, that to this 
love he brought the unsquandered treasure of a strong 
man’s heart. Hosea had never sacrificed on the way- 
side altar. He had therefore much to give. Gomer 
responded in some fashion to his love. Doubtless her 
clay soul glowed for a little while under the spell of 
its warmth. At least she consented to become his wife. 
Thus this brilliant and gifted young preacher was mar¬ 
ried. And according to his own convictions there was 
every promise of highest happiness. 

Of course we are aware of the fact that a man usually 
finds his heaven or his hell in the woman that he mar¬ 
ries. Hosea did not find his heaven. He found his 
hell. Gomer did not sympathize with him in his work 
as he had expected. This patriotic young preacher was 
doing his utmost to save his people from national dis¬ 
aster. He had constantly in his ears “the rumblings of 
a nation that was falling to pieces.” He knew that the 
war chariots in Assyria, whose coming meant utter 
ruin, were on the point of being set in motion. He 
must call Israel back to God if she is to be saved. 
Therefore he was giving himself with all earnestness 
to the work of the ministry. 

But Gomer did not care for these things. She had 
no sympathy with what to her seemed the wild and 
unpractical dreams of her too spiritual husband. She 
only fretted and felt piqued that he gave so much time 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 


11 


and attention to these high matters. She threw it in 
his face with petulant tears when he came home at 
night that he cared more for his preaching than he 
did for her. She began to tell herself and to let others 
tell her that she was leading a starved life; that she 
was young and pretty and made for enjoyment; that 
she had, therefore, a right to an existence that was 
fuller of romance and of gaudy colors. 

For this reason the young preacher lay awake at 
nights sometimes longer than was good for him. For 
this reason he often went about his duties with knit 
brows and with a heavy weight upon his heart. He 
did not acknowledge it to himself, but he was keenly 
disappointed. He saw that there was a chasm widen¬ 
ing between him and the woman that he so passion¬ 
ately loved. And being the man that he was he could 
not look upon this widening chasm without the bitter¬ 
est of secret pain. 

Then it was that an event took place in the little 
parsonage home that brought great joy. At least it 
was a great joy to the young husband. The sweet 
angel of suffering came and there was a little baby hoy 
in the home. As Hosea held his firstborn in his arms 
he dreamed that a new and better day had dawned for 
him and his wayward young wife. He was conscious 
of the fact that she had had too many frivolous interests 
outside her own home. He remembered with pain that 
she did not seem to greatly enjoy his company. She 
was much more pleased with gayer society. But all 
this would be over now. This little fellow would put 
his baby hands on both their hearts and draw them 
closer together than they had ever been before. 

But here again the young preacher was destined to 
be disappointed. Gomer did not become more devoted 


12 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


to her husband and to her home, hut less so. Day by 
day the gay life about her seemed to more and more 
absorb her. Her husband, her baby, her home, were so 
many barriers between her and her rightful enjoy¬ 
ment. The young husband, in spite of his love and his 
cleanliness of mind, was becoming suspicious. At last 
with the passing of the years two other children were 
born, a girl and a boy. The one he named “Unpitied” 
or “Unloved.” And the other he named “Ho Kin of 
Mine,” for by that time he had a suspicion that 
amounted to a damning certainty that his wife was 
unfaithful to him and that the children born in his 
own home, bom under his own roof, were not his own. 

Then followed days of growing estrangement, with 
here and there a period of reconciliation. Gomer 
would weep her passing sorrow upon his heart and then 
go back to her old life. Her repentance was like a 
morning cloud. It was soon past and gone. At last 
there came a dark day when Hosea returned to find 
the children alone in the nursery. Possibly there was 
a tablet left in the hands of Jezreel. It read something 
like this: “You need not seek me. I will never come 
back. I have gone away with another who promises to 
make me happy. I have determined to live my own 
life.” 

It was a terrible blow. In fact it was the worst 
possible blow. JSTo greater wound ever comes to man or 
woman than that. There is a new tenderness in the 
father’s touch as he mothers the three children that 
night. He hears them say their prayers, teaching them 
possibly a new petition: “God bless mother and bring 
her back home.” 

Then the children slept, but there was no sleep for 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 


13 


the deserted husband and father. Back and forth he 
paces, pausing now and then to look into the faces 
of the sleeping children. He gazes with a special 
heart-hunger into the face of the little girl. She has 
no resemblance to himself. But she is so like her 
mother; her mother’s eyes; her mother’s tangled curly 
hair. Is that a strong man’s sobbing we hear ? And is 
this what he is saying: “Oh, Gomel*, how can I give 
thee up?” 

Thus the night passed. Then there was a day equally 
bitter. Then many nights and many days crept by on 
leaden feet; nights in which there were no stars and 
days in which there was no sun. And Hosea struggled 
under the weight of his awful agony. He stood pain¬ 
fully questioning with God about this bitter and ter¬ 
rible tragedy. As last his eyes became clear to see 
and his heart wise to understand. His very tears be¬ 
came telescopes through which he looked deeper into 
the heart of Infinite Love than any other man of his 
day. Over this path of pitch Hosea was led into a 
knowledge of the Gospel deeper, possibly, than that of 
any other man in the Old Testament. 

What were some of the lessons that Hosea learned 
through this awful tragedy? First he learned some¬ 
thing of the nature and meaning of sin. As he brooded 
over the unfaithfulness of Gomer, as he thought of her 
desertion, as he broke his heart over her going from his 
own home, he came to realize that as Gomer had sinned 
against him, so had Israel, the bride of Jehovah, sinned 
against God. The sin of Gomer was unfaithfulness. 
The sin of Israel was also unfaithfulness. 

Hot that Gomer’s sin consisted in the mere fact that 
she deserted himself and his home and gave herself to 


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another. He learned that sin was something more than 
an outward act. It was an inward something. It was 
a thing of the heart. It was a perversion of the will. 
Gomer did not begin to he unfaithful when she left his 
home. That was only the end, the outward expression 
of an infidelity that had been begun months and years 
before. 

How had this terrible domestic tragedy begun? It 
had begun in Gomer’s heart. She began by losing sym¬ 
pathy for her husband. She ceased to appreciate his 
purposes and his plans and his ideals. She came little 
by little to think that life with him would he a lean 
and mean and starved affair. She seriously mistrusted 
his ability to bring her real happiness. 

Then she began naturally to seek her happiness else¬ 
where. She said: “I am young. I have hut one life 
to live. I have a right to enjoyment. I have a right,” 
as we are so fond of saying today, “to live my own life.” 
And wdien I hear anybody say that I know that the 
individual who says it is preparing to do something 
that is selfish and wicked. For to claim that you have 
a right to live your own life is nothing more nor less 
than to claim that you have a right to do as you please. 
It was thus that Gomer ceased to trust and love her 
husband and gave her confidence and her love to 
another. 

Her sin against her husband, therefore, was not sim- 
ply in the fact that she left him. She might have 
sinned against him little less and remained in his home. 
Many husbands and wives today who live in the same 
house and face each other daily at their meals are 
just as wide apart as were Hosea and Gomer. They 
have ceased to he hound together by the only bonds 
that can hind a husband and wife together, and those 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 


15 


are the bonds of love and confidence. Where these do 
not exist, whatever else may he present, there is no real 
happiness and no real wedded life. 

And what is it to sin against God ? Is it to lie or 
to steal or to commit murder ? These are only the out- 
workings of sin. They are the symptoms of an inner 
rottenness. To sin against God is to refuse to trust 
Him, to refuse to give Him your allegiance, your loy¬ 
alty and your love. It is to turn from finding your 
happiness and your joy in Him to seek them else¬ 
where. It is to refuse to make His will supreme in 
order that you may he wrecked hy the kingship of your 
own will. 

JSTow this sin may express itself in far different ways. 
One man may reject God in order to waste his substance 
in riotous living. Another man may reject Him in 
order to lead a life that is altogether decent and moral 
and respectable. Why did the Prodigal Son go into 
the far country? Because he wanted to; because he 
sought to please himself rather than to please his father. 
Why did the Elder Son remain at home ? For the same 
reason. Sin therefore is not so much the outward act 
as it is an inner disloyalty of the heart. 

Just as sin in its essence is a thing of the heart, just 
so, also, is true religion. What did Hosea want of 
Gomer? Did his heartache over her going mean only 
that he missed her service about the house? Did he 
grieve over her unfaithfulness because when she was 
gone there was no one to sweep the floors and dust the 
furniture and prepare the meals? Would he have been 
satisfied had she hired a housekeeper to take her place 
in that deserted home? A million times no. 

What Hosea wanted was not a drudge. He wanted 
a wife. That is, he wanted a companion. He wanted 


16 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


on© who could enter into loving sympathy and fellow¬ 
ship with himself. And that is what God wants. 
“Leal love,” He says, “have I desired and not sacri¬ 
fice.” He is not asking for your service primarily. 
He is not asking for your money first. He is asking 
for you. His appeal is ever this: “Son, give me thine 
heart.” If He gets that He gets everything. If He 
does not get that He gets nothing at all. 

The next lesson that came to Hosea through this 
sordid tragedy was a realization of God’s grief over 
man’s sin. How did he learn this lesson ? He learned 
it through his own grief. Hosea could not see Gomer 
becoming daily more flippant and frivolous, daily more 
and more coarsened without grieving over her. It broke 
his heart to see her love for the filthy and for the 
unclean. He could not take her going away as a trivial 
thing. Daily and nightly on her wandering way 
poured a mourner’s tears. 

Why was this so ? It was true for the simple reason 
that he loved Gomer. In spite of her sin he loved 
her. And because he loved her he could not but suffer, 
he could not but grieve, he could not but break his heart 
as he saw her turn from himself to cling to the thing 
that he knew would work her ruin. And so God was 
grieving over Israel. And so God is grieving over 
you and me. Sin always means pain. It means pain 
to the sinner. Oftentimes it means pain to those 
nearest to us. Always it means pain to the heart of 
God. 

“And he beheld the city and wept over it, and said, 
If thou, even thou, had known at least in this thy day 
the things that belong to thy peace.” There is some¬ 
thing terribly startling in that picture. Whose is that 
tear-wet face? It is the face of Jesus Christ. It is 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 17 

the face of Him in whom dwells all the fullness of 
the Godhead. It is the face of Him who said, “He 
that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Therefore, 
our God is a God who grieves. His face is everlast¬ 
ingly wet with tears; tears over your sin; tears over 
my sin; tears over the sin of the world. Hosea grieved 
over the sin of his wayward wife. God grieves over 
the sin of His wayward people. And His grief is as 
much greater than the grief of Hosea as His love is 
greater than that of Hosea. He is a God infinite in 
love. Therefore He is a God infinite in grief. 

Finally, Hosea learned through this terrible experi¬ 
ence something of the amazing mercy of God. It is 
easy to guess how he came to this discovery. To the 
amazement of himself, to the greater amazement and 
even to the disgust, doubtless, of his friends, he had 
never been able to cease to love his unfaithful wife. 
Gomer had despised him. She had wronged him in the 
worst way that she could possibly have wronged him. 
She had made him an object of scorn among his enemies 
and pity among his friends. She had dragged his 
good name into the very gutter. She had seemed to 
utterly forget him. But though he was forgotten he 
could never forget. 

I can well imagine the many grim battles that he 
had with himself. The story has just come to him 
of a recent chapter in his wife’s sordid life. He hears 
of her doings of last night, of the wild night in some 
brothel. And the friend who tells him said, “I sup¬ 
pose you will divorce her now. I suppose you will turn 
from her forever.” And he makes up his mind to do 
just that. Alone he tries to blot out her memory and 
to tear her image forever from his heart. But he can¬ 
not do it. Though the foul breath of passion has blown 


18 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


her like a filthy rag out of his arms and out of his 
home it is a part of his hell that he loves her still. 

Then he is led to think of God. God is infinitely 
Letter and infinitely more loving than himself. If he 
has been unable to divorce Gomer, if he has been unable 
to forget her though she has forgotten him is not God’s 
heart quite as tender as his own? Hosea knows that- 
it is infinitely more so. So he comes to realize some¬ 
thing of that love that will not let us go. He comes 
to appreciate and to understand the reality of that 
love about which John spoke when he said, “For God 
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son 
that whosoever believed on him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life.” 

Then one day a terrible piece of news comes to this 
sensitive and fine-souled preacher. He hears that the 
man who has lured his wife from him and who prom¬ 
ised to make her happy has deserted her. Worse still 
he learns that he had sold her. That princely knight 
that promised so much, that told her of the great happi¬ 
ness to which he w r as going to introduce her was only 
a “white-slaver” after all. Coming with the promises 
of large freedom he brought in reality only binding 
fetters and galling chains. 

It is the history of sin through all the centuries. It 
makes wonderful promises but it never keeps them. 
'“If you will sin you will be as God,” said the Tempter 
to the woman at the beginning of human history. And 
so she made the venture, expecting to find a fuller 
and freer life. But she found that the promise that 
was made to her was only a cheat, it was only a devil’s 
life. So will you find it. So has every one found it 
since history began. 

I know that to some a life of righteousness looks 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 


19 


cramped and narrow. I know the life of sin looks free 
and broad. There are so many more things that the 
worldling can do than the saint is privileged to do. 
But did you ever realize that there are many things 
that the saint can do that the worldling cannot ? And 
these are the big things. The saint can pray and be¬ 
lieve in God and be useful. And that the worldling 
cannot. But still we allow ourselves to be humbugged. 
We seek the freedom that sin offers and find, alas, that 
it is slavery and nothing more. 

If all who have found this to be their actual experi¬ 
ence were to say “Amen” at this moment it would boom 
like an earthquake and shake like a cannonade. Ask 
Samson if this is not the case. He broke away from the 
restraint of Israel. He must taste life. He must enjoy 
some bit of freedom. But the end of it all was blinded 
eyes and fetters of brass and grinding in the prison 
house. Ask Gomer. She must have the bright lights. 
She must have the flattery and fawning of many ad¬ 
mirers. But now the lights have all gone out and 
she wears a chain, a slave in the filthiest of all filthy 
slave markets. 

What a deceiver is sin. How true is that sentence in 
Revelation: “The hair of a woman,” that is charming, 
lovely, fascinating to look upon, “and the teeth of a 
lion,” powerful to fascinate, powerful also to tear, to 
enslave, to destroy, to damn. There is a spider, I am 
told, that is quite flowerlike in appearance. But the 
bee that comes seeking honey finds itself gripped by 
the tentacles of death. There is also a spider called 
sin. Oftentimes it is fascinating in appearance, but 
its touch is slavery and its grip is destruction. 

“May I speak to you ?” a friend might have said to 
Hosea one day. And they conversed together in low 


20 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


tones. “You say she was sold last night to the highest 
bidder ?” and the prophet’s eyes are big with unshed 
tears and his face is tense and drawn with pain. 
“Yes,” was the reply, “she was sold last night. Surely 
now you will get a divorce. Surely you will turn from 
her for evermore, and blot her name utterly out of the 
hook of your remembrance.” “I will try,” is the low 
answer. “I will try, but I do not know.” 

But that very night Hosea slipped away from the 
children a little while. And when they followed him 
to the door and asked him where he was going he 
hesitated and then kissed them all again and said: “I 
am going to bring mother home.” And he goes, not to 
a home of purity, but down into the haunts of shame. 
He goes to pick up this hit of human wreckage called 
Gomer that the seething seas of sin seem to have spit 
up upon the shore. He buys her from her owner for 
fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley, 
and brings her home again. 

What happens after this we do not know. The cur¬ 
tain is dropped on the pathetic and ugly tragedy. It 
is possible that the love and devotion of this good man 
may have softened Gomer’s heart. Maybe she repented. 
Maybe she wept her way hack to God. Maybe she be¬ 
came a good woman. Maybe she heard a voice saying 
to her: “Though your sins he as scarlet, they shall he as 
white as snow.” But I fear that she did not. I fear 
that to the last she rejected his love. I fear that to 
the end of the day she was as much an outcast in the 
home that was once hers as she was in the far country. 

For though love is the mightiest thing in the world 
it is possible to resist it and to reject it. It is possible 
to resist and to reject human love. It is possible to 
resist and reject the love of God. To many it seemed 


THE PRODIGAL WIFE—GOMER 


21 


little short of madness for this pure and good man to 
so love his wayward and sinning wife as to go to the 
slave market and buy her and give her another chance. 
In the presence of such a love they stood amazed and 
bewildered. 

But here is a far more wonderful story. When you 
and I had resisted and insulted the love of God, when 
you and I had turned from Him in cool contempt, 
when we and all our brothers had made shipwreck in 
so doing, our Lord did not utterly cast us off. In 
His mercy He refused to throw us away. But He came 
also to the slave market and bought us hack. The price 
that He paid was not fifteen pieces of silver and a 
homer and a half of barley. The price that He paid 
was His own life. “For even the Son of man came 
not to he ministered unto, hut to minister, and to give 
His life a ransom for many. . . . He was wounded for 
our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: 
the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with 
His stripes we are healed.” Will you respond to that 
sacrificial love ? Will you cast yourself in helpless peni¬ 
tence into His arms? If you will He will make you 
whiter than snow. If you refuse, yours is the un¬ 
pardonable sin, for it is the sin against love. 


II 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 

Acts 6: 8 

During the busy and eventful weeks immediately 
following the day of Pentecost, people separated by 
wide chasms were brought into the fold of the Christian 
brotherhood. Among this number were foreign-born 
Jews and home-bom Jews. These had hated each other 
heartily in the past, but now they were being welded 
together by the bonds of their common faith in Jesus 
Christ. This growing spirit of brotherliness, however, 
was not permitted to continue without hindrance. 
Something took place at the time of our story that 
came very near splitting the infant Church into angry 
and opposing factions. 

The cause of this unfortunate situation was this: 
many of the recent converts to Christianity were not 
allowed to return home. They were cut off from all 
financial support. They stood face to face with pinch¬ 
ing poverty. To meet the demand for immediate help, 
big-hearted men came forward, such as Barnabas, who 
gave their all to the support of these needy and home¬ 
less converts. The funds thus obtained were put into 
the hands of the Apostles and were administered by 
them. 

But for some reason the administration of the Twelve 
did not prove satisfactory. The foreign-bom Jews be¬ 
came convinced that they were not getting a square 

deal. They claimed that their widows were neglected 

22 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 


23 


in the daily ministration. Then it was that the 
Apostles very wisely decided to remedy the evil by a 
further organization of the Church. They saw that 
they themselves had been undertaking too much. They 
realized that they had been giving their time and their 
energies to a much needed work, but to a work to which 
they were not especially and divinely called. 

For this reason Peter and his fellow Apostles came 
before the multitude with this wise suggestion: “It is 
not reason that we should leave the word of God, and 
serve tables. Therefore, look ye out among you seven 
men full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may 
appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves 
continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 
That was an exceedingly wise decision. And great is 
the pity that all ministers of the Gospel have not exer¬ 
cised the same high and holy wisdom. 

You see that these Apostles were in danger of being 
side-tracked. They were in danger of giving all their 
time to work to which they had not been appointed. 
Had they done so, they must needs have lost much of 
their effectiveness in their own divinely appointed work. 
And the danger that they faced and avoided is one that 
has only grown greater with the passing of the years. 
In our day the machinery of the Church has been 
greatly multiplied. Preachers are better trained today 
than they have ever been before. But I am afraid that 
the modern Church, with all its weak spots, is weakest 
in its pulpit. We as ministers have become skilled in 
many ways, but we have done so at a great price. Too 
often we have lost our skill at doing the supreme things. 
We have forgotten how to “give ourselves continually 
to prayer and the ministry of the Word.” 

When the multitude heard the suggestion of Peter 


24 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


and his fellow Apostles, they greeted it with hearty 
welcome. And it is my opinion that there was at least 
one name that was immediately suggested to almost 
every man and woman that was then present. “They 
are going to select seven men to administer the tem¬ 
poral affairs of the Church ? Then I know one who is 
just exactly fitted to he president of that committee. I 
know one who is exactly the man to he Chairman of 
the Official Board.” So one of the listeners said to his 
neighbor. And the neighbor answered immediately: 
“Yes, I thought of him the instant that Brother Peter 
made the suggestion. You are thinking of our young 
brother, Stephen, no doubt,” And so he was and so was 
almost everybody else. Thus Stephen was chosen and 
was made president. And I have a fancy that his elec¬ 
tion was unanimous. 

Now it is with real pleasure that I introduce to 
you this morning Stephen, Chairman of the Official 
Board. This ancient lay preacher is one of the most 
charming personalities in all the history of the Church. 
His whole story is told in two chapters of the New 
Testament. We watch him live for but one brief day 
of his life. We see him pass early and swiftly. But 
he abides long enough to leave his name written in¬ 
delibly upon our minds and hearts. He appeals to us 
as embodying in himself the very highest and kingliest 
qualities of Christian manhood. 

Doctor Luke’s admiration for this gifted young man 
is very evident. He has one word that he applies to him 
again and again, and that is the word “full.” In the 
estimation of Luke, there was a fine well-roundedness, a 
fascinating fullness about Stephen. He did not im¬ 
press Luke as being a fractional man. He was not a 
one-sided, half-baked individual. He was well-rounded, 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 


25 


full-orbed. He was finely balanced, well grown. He 
impresses bis biographer as one the elements of whose 
character were so mixed that nature might stand and 
say to all the world, “This is a man.” 

Stephen—full. But what is the next word? In 
what did Stephen’s fullness consist? That is a su¬ 
premely important question. There are some full folks 
that we cannot away with. We say, “I could like him, 
but he is so full of himself. He is so full of irony. 
He is so full of sarcasm. He is so full of trickery and 
treachery.” There are some people who repel us be¬ 
cause their souls are peopled with varied and unat¬ 
tractive demons. 

But what of Stephen ? “Stephen, full of faith.” 
That is the first fine element of his fullness. He was 
a man not with a meager and timid and invalid faith. 
He was a man not with a sickly little handful of faith. 
He was a man full of faith, so full that though doubt 
came and knocked at his door every morning and every 
noon and every night, Stephen simply smiled and shook 
his head and said, “No room. Faith is my guest now.” 
“Stephen, full of faith.” 

That means, of course, that Stephen was on good 
terms with God. That means that God delighted in 
Stephen and that Stephen delighted in God. That 
means that there was a fine intimacy between them, an 
intimacy that can exist in no other way. “For without 
faith it is impossible to please God. For he that cometh 
to God must believe that He is and that He is a re¬ 
warder of them that diligently seek Him.” 

Not only was Stephen full of faith toward God. 
He was also full of faith toward men. It does not take 
a wise man to see why this is true. How do we know 
that Stephen trusted people? How do we know that 


26 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


lie believed in folks? Here is positive proof: folks 
believed in him. The whole brotherhood regarded him 
with fine firm trust and confidence. And cynics and 
misanthropes are never so trusted. If you put a ques¬ 
tion after everybody’s name, do not forget that they 
will put that same kind of mark after yours. But faith 
begets faith. 

Not only was Stephen full of faith, but he was full 
of wisdom. “The children of this world,” said Jesus, 
“are wiser in their generation than the children of 
light.” Yes, that is true, but Stephen is a lovely excep¬ 
tion. Stephen had that faith that could see visions 
and dream dreams, but he was more than a dreamer. 
He was a man of hard-headed common sense. He was 
a man who brought those faculties that would have 
made him a leader in the world of finance or of politics 
and dedicated them fully upon the altar of his Lord. 

“Stephen, full of wisdom.” If there were hard ques¬ 
tions about the administration of the Church they con¬ 
sulted Stephen. He was always ready with a sugges¬ 
tion that showed the keen insight of genius. If there 
was an individual with perplexities and problems with 
which he did not know how to cope, he came and talked 
with Brother Stephen about them. Though young in 
years he was wise. He was so wise that the keen 
historian Luke, writing under the inspiration of the 
Holy Spirit, said that he was “full of wisdom.” 

“Stephen, full of power.” If there was a fine virtue 
that he seemed to be more full of than any other it is 
this of power. Where Stephen went, things happened. 
Changes took place, revolutions were wrought, and it 
stands written in the Record, “they were not able to 
resist the spirit and the wisdom by which he spake.” 
He was full of power. The word used for power here 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 


27 


is the one from which we get our modem word, “dyna¬ 
mite.” This young saint was full of moral dynamite. 
He was a spiritual tornado. He swept things before 
him with an irresistible force. 

Full of power—that is not the word that we may 
use about the Church as a whole in this day of grace. 
Full of power—that is not the way we would go about 
describing most of the church members that we know. 
Fnil of power—that is not even the word that we would 
use to describe the majority of our ministers. Full of 
eloquence, it may be; full of learning; full of fine and 
gentlemanly qualities; full of a thousand desirable char¬ 
acteristics. But full of power—that is a description 
that, sad to say, describes only the few. 

And yet was there ever a day when powerful saints 
were any more needed ? Were they ever more needed 
in the pulpit and were they ever more needed in the 
pew ? I know we have decency and respectability and 
kindness of heart. We have money and culture and 
social standing. But power—do we possess that abso¬ 
lute essential? “Mount Vernon Place Church, full of 
power.” Is that the way our church is entered upon 
the books of Heaven? Is that a fit description of us 
as individuals ? Surely it ought to be. Surely our 
oppositions are terrific enough to make power an abso¬ 
lute necessity. And yet we must realize that the word 
“full of weakness” would be a far better description of 
too many of us. 

But, for our consolation and encouragement, let us 
bear in mind that this fine fullness may be ours. “Full 
of power” may as fitly describe you and me as it did 
Stephen of this far-off day. He who made men mighty 
centuries ago makes them mighty still wherever and 
whenever He has His way. “Ye shall receive power,” 


28 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

He is saying to us at this moment. “Tarry ye till ye 
be endued with power.” Oh, believe me, if our Chris¬ 
tianity is the Christianity of the Hew Testament, it is 
a mighty something. It is a force in the presence of 
which the thunders of Niagara and the sweep of tor¬ 
nadoes will be as weak and trifling things. 

Then there is one more fullness that Luke ascribed 
to Stephen. “Stephen, full of grace.” And when you 
hear that you recall that bejeweled sentence from 
John’s Gospel: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt 
among us, full of grace . . .” Christ was full of 
grace. Christ’s servant Stephen was also full of grace. 
That is, he was charming. He was magnetic. He was 
fascinating. He was attractive. 

“Stephen, full of grace.” He cast a spell over folks. 
He was as winsome as the springtime; as attractive as 
sea music. When folks were in his presence, they found 
themselves strangely comforted and helped. The bro¬ 
ken-hearted forgot to sob when he was by. The hope¬ 
less forgot their despair. The wounded forgot their 
hurts. The barren and desert-hearted began to dream 
that the dreary wastes within their own souls might be 
made to rejoice and blossom as a rose. He was a 
gracious man. 

And yet he did not win men merely to himself. 
What says that bright star yonder that keeps eternal 
lids apart in the night sky ? It says, “I owe my charm 
to another. I would have no beauty except it were 
given me. For me to shine is the sun.” And so 
Stephen, full of grace, spoke to men of a gracious 
Savior. As they went away from listening to him 
they said, “I will go and learn something of his charm. 
I will go and consult the same Specialist that he has 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 


29 


consulted, and see if He cannot smooth the care lines 
and the frown lines and the sin scars out of my own 
face/’ 

“Stephen, full of grace.” And that grace spoke in 
every tone of his voice. It looked out through his 
kindly eyes. It shone in every lineament of his face. 
“And they saw his face,” the Record says, “as it had 
been the face of an angel.” Truly he had found the 
secret of real beauty. Ho, every one that thirsteth for 
real charm, every one that longs to he genuinely and 
truly attractive, come and sit at the feet of the young 
preacher Stephen. He can show you how to become 
winsome with the very winsomeness of Jesus. He can 
show you how to lay hold on that which many of us 
lack so much and long for so much. He can show us 
how to he full of grace, full of charm, such grace and 
charm as cannot hut be a blessing to the whole circle, 
whether large or small, that we are privileged to touch. 

But you say, “That is well enough for Stephen living 
in the very shadow of Pentecost. But it is not possible 
for me. It is easy enough for Stephen to be full of 
these fine graces. But I have no hope personally of 
any such fullness. If I even make a start in that 
direction my life is soon depleted of its energies. All 
my moral forces are soon exhausted. Therefore, I see 
no hope for myself either for today or for tomorrow.” 

But before you reach this dismal conclusion, let us ask 
the secret of Stephen’s fullness. What is the secret of 
the continued fullness of our old home spring down in 
Tennessee? It is not the fact that that spring never 
gives out any water. It is not the fact that no one ever 
stoops to drink its laughing life. It is giving, giving, 
giving all the time. Indeed it would exhaust itself in 


SO MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


less than an hour but for one fact. It is fed from 
hidden and inexhaustible sources. Far back in the 
heart of the great hills is a reservoir that can give from 
generation to generation and never be exhausted. 

And this is Stephen’s secret. He is a greatly gifted 
young man. I am aware of that fact. There was not 
another man in the Church in his day who had his abil¬ 
ity. He had an intellect that in its wide and daring 
grasp of things was a rival to that of St. Paul. But 
this does not account for him. Neither is he accounted 
for by saying that he was a well-trained, a finely cul¬ 
tured young man. 

What, then, is the secret? How comes he to be full 
of all the fine graces that we have mentioned ? These 
are but the natural outcome of another fullness. It is 
mentioned by Luke in the very beginning and accounts 
for all else. Listen: “Stephen full of the Holy 
Ghost.” Here then is the spring from which all these 
rivers flow. Here then is the sun that lighted all 
these winsome stars. You can only account for Ste¬ 
phen’s graces and fine enviable qualities by saying that 
he was a man in whom Christ dwelt in the person of 
the Holy Ghost. 

And surely this blessed fullness is just as much 
within reach of you and of me today as it was within 
reach of Stephen. “Jesus Christ is the same yester¬ 
day, today and forever.” What He did, He does. 
Wherever He has been able to get possession of men 
as he got possession of Stephen He begets those same 
high qualities. Oh, may we not this day, because of the 
needs of our own lives, because of the needs of our 
homes, because of the needs of our church, offer our¬ 
selves fully to Him. He waits to be gracious. He waits 
to enter in and possess us. For “we are His witnesses 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 


31 


as is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them 
that obey Him.” 

And look a moment at the outcome of this fullness. 
“ Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, and therefore full 
of faith and wisdom and power and grace.” But what 
was the end of it all ? What did it amount to ? The 
first result of this fullness was not simply that he was 
a joyous and sunny Christian. He was that. But 
what we want to notice especially is the effect of his 
fullness upon the world, upon the people of his own 
day and the people of all days that have come and are 
to come after. 

Stephen, then, full of the Holy Spirit was full of 
highest usefulness. He was appointed to a position 
that looked quite small. He was to help administer the 
temporal affairs of a semi-pauper Church. But he 
made these temporal affairs to administer to highest 
spiritual ends. He gave out bread in such a fashion 
as to make men hunger for the Bread of Life. And 
when he passed out a bit of money to the needy he 
did not forget to tell them where they could buy wine 
and milk without money and without price. He worked 
with his might in his small sphere and God honored him 
and made him a mighty preacher. 

And how effective he was in his preaching. Jeru¬ 
salem was a proud and wicked city. It was full of 
cultured and religious aristocrats. Those aristocrats 
would have given a world to have been able to ignore 
Stephen. ^Nothing would have suited them better than 
to have been able to treat him with cool and complete 
contempt. But they could not ignore him. They might 
as well have tried to ignore a burning building when 
the wind was high. They might as well have tried to 
ignore a cyclone. There was hardly a man in Jeru- 


» 32 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


salem stupid enough and sleepy enough not to know 
that Stephen was in town on a business trip for his 
King. 

Mark you, I do not say that everybody welcomed 
Stephen’s message. I do not say that everybody who 
heard him repented and became a follower of Jesus 
Christ. Many did. Many even among the priests 
yielded to his impassioned appeals. Many hearts were 
softened. But this was not true of all. Some were 
made only the more bitter. Some had all the serpents 
within their souls awakened into activity. Some were 
led to hate him with a hatred that only his life blood 
could satisfy. But this I say, they could not remain 
stupidly and stolidly indifferent. 

And do I not voice the longing of your heart this 
morning when I say, Oh, for a Church that the world 
cannot treat with indifference. Oh, for a band of saints 
that it is absolutely impossible to ignore. Oh, for a 
ministry that will divide audiences and communities 
and cities and continents into those who are either out 
and out for Christ or out and out against Him. Oh, 
for a Christianity virile enough to compel the active 
opposition, the open antagonism of the forces of evil 
that refuse to be won. The Church of Jesus Christ 
can stand any amount of opposition. “The gates of 
hell shall not prevail against it.” But the direst of all 
dire calamities is for it to become so effete, so powerless, 
so dead, that it is not worth fighting. 

Stephen, full of the Spirit, I repeat, became Stephen, 
full of highest service. Where he labored many fell in 
love with his Lord. Where he labored opposition grew 
bitter. His enemies ground their teeth like enraged 
beasts. But Stephen with a fine high courage continued 
his message. He went on with his sermon, though he 


A FULL MAN—STEPHEN 


33 


knew that every sentence that he nttered was becoming 
a stone in the hands of his enemies. He spoke right 
on though he knew that he was digging his own grave 
as he spoke. “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in 
heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as 
your fathers did, so do ye.” 

The assembly becomes a mob. The young preacher is 
hurried out of the city. The scene that follows is noth¬ 
ing more than a common lynching. These men have 
not been able to resist his inspired logic. They have 
been publicly humiliated. They will have their re¬ 
venge. And so they pelt him with stones. His angelic 
face becomes bruised and blood-stained. A few minutes 
later he lies battered and broken and very still. And 
the wolves have had their prey. 

But they had not been able, with all their stones, to 
kill his open vision. “I see the heavens open,” he cries, 
“and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” 
Though they killed his body they were not able to kill 
his Christlike spirit of forgiveness. As he falls a 
victim to their hate he throws around their cruel shoul¬ 
ders “the sheltering folds of a protecting prayer”: 
“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Though they 
killed his body they were not able to destroy his peace. 
“Be quiet,” says the mother, as she puts her baby to 
sleep. But God can put his child to sleep amidst the 
howl of mobs and the flying of stones. And so Stephen 
fell asleep. 

Stephen, full of the Holy Ghost, was a blessing while 
he lived. An abiding blessing he has been through all 
the changing years. One young man stood by that day 
well pleased with his death. But he was never able 
to banish the picture of the angelic face of this flrst 
Christian martyr from his mind and heart. At last 


34 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


this proud man fell prostrate on the desert sand with 
this cry upon his lips, “Lord, what wilt thou have me 
to do ?” And I feel confident that the first of the saints 
that Paul greeted when he reached the heavenly country 
was “Stephen, a man full of the Holy Ghost.” 


Ill 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 

2 Kings 9: 30, 31 

Hear the text: “When Jehu was come to Jezreel, 
Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired 
her head, and looked out at a window. And as Jehu 
entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace, who 
slew his master V’ This face at the window gripped 
the attention of Jehu at once. It held the fascinated 
attention of every man with him. No man could pass 
this face by and utterly ignore it. It was far too strik¬ 
ing, too arresting for that. 

Now of course Jezebel was not striking simply be¬ 
cause her face was painted. The painting of the face 
was quite a common thing in that day. It was fairly 
prevalent among the American Indians. It is even 
sometimes practiced among ourselves by the exceedingly 
bleached and the exceedingly young. So far as I know 
it is quite an innocent form of disfigurement. It is 
also at times quite perplexing. Why a young girl, for 
instance, with the fresh roses of youth upon her cheeks, 
would take pains to hide these lovely flowers under a 
glaring coat of artificiality, is beyond my comprehen¬ 
sion. But so she often does. However we are inter¬ 
ested neither in the young girl nor in Jezebel because 
of her paint. 

As we get a glimpse of the face of this woman, 

Jezebel, we cannot fail to recognize something of its 

coarseness and cruelty. In the springtime of life she 

35 


36 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


may have been a beautiful girl. But that is passed 
now. Years of sinning have left their ugly marks and 
scars upon her and no skill of painting can wholly hide 
them. In fact any outward adornment is ever a poor 
substitute for the loss of inner loveliness. When the 
hot blasts of iniquity have withered the fair flowers of 
the soul there is little to be gained by trying to repro¬ 
duce them outwardly upon the cheeks. 

But if this painted face of Jezebel is striking for 
its cruelty, it is no less striking for its strength and 
intelligence. Jezebel is capable and forceful. She is 
the worst hated woman in the Bible. That alone im¬ 
plies strength. We do not hate weaklings and pigmies. 
We hate giants. Jehu calls her the “cursed woman.” 
She is the evil genius of her day. She is the Lady 
Macbeth of the Old Testament. She has all the ambi¬ 
tion and all the brilliant, dashing courage of that ill- 
starred queen. She also has all her flinty cruelty and 
stoniness of heart. Surely Lady Macbeth’s prayer was 
answered in full on behalf of Jezebel. 

. . Come, you ministering spirits 
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here. 

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full 
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; 

Stop up the access and passage to remorse. 

That no compunctious visitings of nature 

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts 

And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers. 

Wherever in your sightless substances 

You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night, 

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark 
To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’ . . .” 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 


37 


Here then is a woman whose name has become a 
synonym for all that is basest and most bloody. Here 
is a woman whose life ended in direst and ghastliest 
tragedy. And every one feels that it should have been 
so. Every one must feel that in dying as she died she 
was but reaping as she had sown. But how did she 
come to be the monster that she was ? How did Jezebel 
come to be a name to make us shudder? It was not 
always an ugly name. There was a time when a queen 
mother and a father who was king thought it a fit 
name for a beautiful and tender baby girl. How do 
we account for J ezebel ? 

Now, there is one easy w T ay to account for her and 
that is to say that she was born a monster. We love 
to think, as others have pointed out, that those people 
who go greatly wrong are made of different material 
from that of which we ourselves are made. We love to 
think of them as constructed of the slime and ooze of 
things, while we ourselves are composed of much finer 
and purer material. But in so thinking we are wrong. 
We are wrong for the simple reason that no child ever 
comes into the world wholly bad. I know it means 
much to be well born. I know that some children 
do not have as good opportunity in this respect as 
others. But no child is ever a monster from the be¬ 
ginning. 

So what Jezebel became was not altogether a result 
of bad birth. “Every child comes into the world with 
the kiss of a loving Father upon its innocent soul." 
And there is not one single stain upon the whiteness of 
its little heart. It has the possibilities of descending 
into the depths. But it also has the possibilities of 
ascending into the highest heights. The path it takes 
is determined in some measure by its heredity. We are 


38 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


conscious of that. But it is determined in far greater 
measure by its teachers. 

The supreme cause of the moral failure of Jezebel, 
I think, was that she was born in a heathen palace and 
had an early training that was bad. She was nurtured 
in an atmosphere that was foul and filthy. She was 
trained in a religion that infected its votaries with 
moral leprosy. The gods to whom she was introduced 
were gods of filth and lust. They were mere dumb 
symbols of iniquity that neither had nor claimed the 
slightest power to make men good. They neither had 
nor claimed the slightest longing to make men good. 

As was perfectly natural, this early training cast its 
blight over JezebeEs entire life. It is hard indeed to 
get over a wrong training in childhood. It is possible, 
through the good grace of God, to do so. But it is very 
rare indeed that those wrongly trained avail themselves 
of that possibility. Of those who come into our 
churches, of those who even attend our churches, the 
overwhelming majority are the ones who had some 
sort of religious training in youth. In my entire min¬ 
istry I never recall to have seen one single man or 
woman converted who had not in some fashion been 
brought into contact with the teachings of the Gospel in 
their young and tender years. 

Then Jezebel had a second handicap. She made an 
unfortunate marriage. Her husband, you remember, 
was named Ahab. Ahab was nominally a follower of 
the Lord. But in reality his religion counted for naked 
nothing. The big difference between him and the 
woman he married was that while he was weak and 
and wicked she was strong and wicked. If Ahab had 
been a man of true and vital faith, if he had been 
strong through the power of God, he might have saved 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 


39 


his gifted queen and through her he might have gone 
far towards saving the nation. But she dominated him 
and turned him to her religion, instead of him turning 
her to his. 

Yes, Jezebel dominated her weak husband and turned 
him away from the faith of his fathers. A woman 
seems naturally stronger in this particular than a man. 
We meet thousands of women who are loyal and con¬ 
secrated and conscientious Christians and whose hus¬ 
bands are utterly indifferent or even antagonistic. And 
yet these faithful and brave and loyal hearts hold on 
their course, year after year, undaunted and uncon¬ 
quered. But how rare it is to find a man, even a strong 
man, who will hold on his way when his wife is out 
of sympathy with him. I have seen a little butterfly 
of a society girl, whose weight morally was about that 
of a bubble, quench the zeal of a strong man. I have 
seen her turn him away both from his church and from 
his Lord. 

Not only did Jezebel influence her husband and 
dominate him, but she did the court the same way. 
And dominating the court she also dominated the 
nation. She hated the religion of the Jews. It was 
narrow. So with profound audacity and a daring that 
would have been commendable in a noble cause, she 
displaced it with the corrupt and corrupting religion 
of her own nation. 

How much the world missed by this woman’s failing 
to be a good woman. What a zealous worker she was 
in the interest of religion that she knew to be altogether 
vicious and rotten. She was so active and aggressive 
and enthusiastic that she fairly swept the nation off its 
feet. After a few years of her zealous propaganda we 
find a faithful preacher saying to God: “For the chil- 


40 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


dren of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down 
thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and 
I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take 
it away.” 

You will remind me, doubtless, that Elijah was mis¬ 
taken. You are correct. He was. God said: “There 
are seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to 
Baal.” And yet what a pitiful little handful this was 
in a whole nation that claimed loyalty to Jehovah. 
Jezebel was a worker and she worked successfully. It 
is true that the gospel that she preached was a gospel 
of filth and degradation. It is true that her message 
was a message that had in it the germs of an eating 
cancer. But notwithstanding the poorness, yea, the 
utter hellishness, of the story that she had to tell, she 
told it with a fiery zeal and courage that produced most 
tragic results. 

And here are we, followers of Jesus Christ. We 
claim Him as our Lord, of whom it is said, “The zeal 
for thy house hath eaten me up.” He has entrusted 
us with His Gospel, which Gospel is the power of God 
unto salvation. We have a story to tell that is the 
one hope of this perplexed and groping world. And 
yet how feeble we are, how listless, how indifferent, how 
stupid. Oh, for more souls on fire both in pulpit and in 
pew. If we had as much zeal and enthusiasm in the 
preaching of our gospel of salvation as did this woman 
in the preaching of her gospel of lies, we would turn 
the world upside down. 

The third cause that contributed to the ruin of 
Jezebel was her prosperity in wrong doing. She was 
stronger than her husband. She was stronger than 
the people about her. She sinned openly and above 
board. And the more she sinned the stronger she 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 


41 


seemed to become. She became the dupe and victim of 
successful sin. Success in any enterprise is more or 
less dangerous. But the most ghastly and damning of 
all success is success in sin. The man who is sorely 
wounded in his first encounter with evil may come to 
hate it and turn away from it. But the one who pros¬ 
pers in wrongdoing is in great danger of becoming 
permanently married to the thing that will mean his 
utter ruin. 

But God did not leave Himself without a witness 
even in that far-off day. Jezebel cannot rise up in 
judgment and claim that she had no opportunity. She 
had all the light that she needed for the guidance of 
her feet from the paths of ruin into paths of blessed¬ 
ness and peace. Her pastor was one of the big and 
brawny and broad-shouldered sons of God of the Old 
Testament. He was one of the greatest men that ever 
came to speak for God in this world. When Jesus was 
here, he was one of the two sent from heaven to talk 
to Him about the mystery of the Cross. She had 
Elijah for her preacher. 

NTow, no one could come into contact with Elijah 
and ever be the same. Elijah was “incarnate con¬ 
science.” A certain woman in whose home he was for 
a time a guest said to him: “You have come to bring 
my sin to remembrance.” He did not tell this woman 
that she was a sinner. By being what he was he made 
her conscious of what she was. One man said of a 
certain preacher that he never saw him even pass along 
the road that he did not make him sorry for his sin and 
hungry for a better life. 

Gypsy Smith was preaching in Paris some years ago. 
At the close of one of his services cards were handed 
out for those present to sign who desired to become 


42 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


Christians. One of the cards was signed by a young 
princess of the house of Bourbon. Gypsy Smith had 
been speaking in English and this young princess did 
not understand English. Therefore her companion ex¬ 
pressed surprise and said: “Why, you did not under¬ 
stand a word that he said.” “I know I did not,” was 
the reply, “but I could tell by the very tone of his 
voice and by the look of his face that he has something 
that I need.” Gypsy Smith was an incarnate con¬ 
science. And so is every man just in proportion as he 
lives in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. 

Now this man Elijah came into the royal palace one 
day and said to the guilty pair: “There shall not be 
rain or dew upon the earth except at my word.” And 
the fountains of Israel dried up and the grass grew 
sere. And the flowers faded and the leaves withered. 
And Israel became a desert, sentinelled by death. What 
was the matter with Israel ? Ahab knew and Jezebel 
knew. It was sin that had cut off Israel’s water supply. 
That is what has changed your heart garden into a 
desert. You have tried to think that it is because you 
have not achieved your ambition. Or because you have 
suffered this loss. But when you dare look yourself eye 
to eye and be perfectly honest, you know what the 
trouble is. You know what is your tragedy. It is just 
this: it is your sin. It is the miserable quarrel of your 
soul with God. 

Jezebel knew what was the matter. So did Ahab. 
But they were not willing to face the facts. When 
Elijah comes back after three and a half years of 
drouth, Ahab goes to meet him. He is bearing in his 
mouth, I feel confident, the question that Jezebel has 
taught him: “Art thou he that troubleth Israel ?” And 
how prompt and true is the answer of God’s prophet: 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 


43 


“I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s 
house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of 
the Lord.” 

But these royal sinners of long ago preferred to 
blame the rebuker of their sin instead of the sin itself. 
They blamed the physician rather than the disease. 
They desired to use the knife upon the surgeon rather 
than upon their own festering rottenness. And their 
kind is not dead. There are still those who try to 
make getting angry at the preacher a substitute for 
repentance. There are those still who seek to cure 
their deadly diseases by showing the doctor the door. 

Just the other day I read how insanity had doubled 
in Chicago in the last two years. The reason given for 
this appalling increase was the vast amount of vicious 
bootleg liquor that the people were drinking. And the 
moral drawn was this, that the Eighteenth Amendment 
ought to be repealed. That is, the law written into the 
Constitution of the United States is responsible for the 
drunkenness of those people in Chicago. Now is that 
true ? Nothing could be more untrue. It is not the 
law that made them drunk. It was a flagrant vio¬ 
lation of the law. Get angry at the violation instead 
of at the law. Blame the sin that has turned your 
garden into desert rather than the prophet who warns 
and rebukes you. To take the opposite course is mad¬ 
ness. 

It was not, therefore, lack of light that was the ruin 
of Jezebel. If this experience had not been enough 
there were others. Jezebel knew all about that heroic 
test on Carmel. She knew the failure of her own gods. 
She knew how the God of Elijah had answered by fire. 
Then later she had been made to realize how the sin of 
Ahab had found him out. It had come very close to 


44 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

her when her husband, who had consented to Naboth’s 
murder, was himself fed to the dogs by the pool of 
Samaria. 

But Jezebel was not softened. She was made the 
harder. Not that she did not believe in the reality of 
God. Not that she did not believe that sin had horrible 
consequences. But she shut her eyes to these facts. 
God gave her all the light she needed, but she delib¬ 
erately refused to give hospitality to the light. Thus 
she came to that ruinous position where she believed 
that God’s law worked in every case except her own. 
She believed that sin would find the sinner out pro¬ 
vided that sinner was not herself. She became con¬ 
vinced that the evil that would dethrone others would 
put a crown upon her brow. Thus she forged for her¬ 
self her chains of doom. 

And now she is facing the last act in the ugly trag¬ 
edy of her life. The man who is to be the instrument 
of her death is entering in at the city gate. But this 
woman does not hide. She does not put on sackcloth 
and come before him to beg his mercy. She decks her¬ 
self like a queen and stands in the wdndow as a preacher 
of righteousness. And she hurls at her antagonist this 
question: “Had Zimri peace, who slew his master?” 
What does she mean by that question ? She is calling 
Jehu’s attention to the fact that when Zimri murdered 
his master his sin found him out. Zimri paid the pen¬ 
alty in a very few short days. And what she means is 
just this: “Jehu, be sure your sin will find you out. 
Jehu, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap.” 

Did she believe that ? She believed it for everybody 
but herself. For a lifetime she had been sowing to 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 


45 


the flesh. For a lifetime she had been sowing the 
seeds of lust and hate and murder. And all the while 
she had been flattering herself that she could reap a 
harvest that was altogether different. But she became 
then and there an illustration of her own text. “Who 
is on my side ?” shouts Jehu from the street below as he 
looks at the painted face in the window. Two or three 
men show their faces. “Throw her down” is the 
order. 

Do you hear the scuffling in that upper room? Do 
you hear that wild shriek, that dull thud ? And there 
is a spattering of blood upon the wall of the building 
and upon the hoofs of the horses and the wheels of 
the chariot as Jehu drives ruthlessly over this woman 
whose life has been one long sowing of the seeds of 
iniquity. 

Jehu enters into the palace and feasts himself. When 
the feast is over he bethinks him of the betrampled 
corpse in the street. And he says to the servants, 
“She is a king’s daughter. Go out and bury her.” But 
when they go out to gather up the remains, all that is 
left is a ghastly skull and the soles of her feet and the 
palms of her hands. And as I look at the hideous sight 
I can see one of those dog-gnawed hands write this 
sentence on the crimsoned cobblestones: “Be not de¬ 
ceived. God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sow- 
eth, that shall he also reap.” 

And the thought that I cannot get away from is this: 
How differently this story might have ended; what a 
lost power for good was this brilliant and gifted woman. 
She gave her immense energies to sin and was the 
means of corrupting almost an entire nation. Had 
she given herself with the same dauntless courage and 


46 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


enthusiasm to God she might have been the means of 
the salvation of a nation, and future centuries would 
have risen up and called her blessed. 

Oh, the power we throw away! I have looked upon 
great rivers rushing on their way to the sea, that turn 
few wheels and contribute little or nothing to the run¬ 
ning of the world’s machinery. I have seen Niagaras 
spending themselves in thunder. But the most terrible 
waste that God or men ever beheld is the waste of 
human life. Oh, the possibilities that are locked in 
the hearts and the lives of you that are listening to me 
at this moment. And yet some of you are going to 
squander your treasure. You are going to throw your¬ 
selves away. 

“What are you going to do with yourself, Jezebel ? 
You are brilliant, you are strong, you are capable, you 
are highly gifted. You have all a woman’s personal 
magnetism and charm. What are you going to do with 
it all ? How are you going to invest this God-given 
wealth?” Had Jezebel known the future as we know 
her life today and had she been honest, she would have 
answered after this fashion: “I am going to use my 
immense powers for the ruin of my home. I am going 
to make my husband into a murderer. I am going to 
stain the blood of my children so that by and by my 
sins will be visited upon them. I am going to take 
this body of mine and throw it out into the street for 
dog meat.” 

What are you going to do with your life ? Are you 
going to lend it to that which makes for your own ruin 
and for the ruin of those about you? Remember that 
as you sow, so shall you reap. Sow to the flesh and 
you will of the flesh reap corruption. There is no 
avoiding that fact. It will work in your case. It will 


THE PAINTED FACE—JEZEBEL 


47 


work in mine. The law of gravitation acts as ruth¬ 
lessly with a prince as with a pauper. And so does the 
law of moral retribution. If you sow to the flesh you 
will of the flesh reap corruption. If you sow tares, 
tares will be your harvest. But if on the other hand 
you sow to the spirit, you will reap a spiritual harvest. 
Thorns will grow in this world and so will roses. 
Hetties will spring up if you plant them. Violets and 
honeysuckles will do the same. The field is yours. It 
is up to you to determine the harvest. 


IV 


COMING BY NIGHT—NICODEMUS 

% 

John 3:2 

Hear the text: “There was a man of the Pharisees 
named Hicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same 
came to Jesus by night.” How, that was an astonish¬ 
ing thing for Nicodemus to do. It was amazing be¬ 
cause of who this man was. Did you notice that he 
was a ruler of the Jews? He was a man then of posi¬ 
tion, and the One to whom he went had no position. 
He was an aristocrat and the man to whom he went 
was of the people. He was a man of the schools. He 
was a scholar, hut the One to whom he went had no 
diploma. He had never won a single degree. He had 
never been inside a university. Hicodemus was a man 
who had got far on into life. His hair was white. He 
was now an old man, old in honor and in years. And 
the One to whom he went was a young man, young 
enough to he his son. 

Yet we read this striking sentence: “The same came 
to Jesus.” That* one short word speaks volumes. It 
tells us a wonderful story about this ancient Pharisee. 
It gives us a marvelous insight into his character. 
When we read that about him we are interested at once 
because we know that the man who came to Jesus under 
the circumstances under which Hicodemus came was no 
ordinary man. 

What sort of man was he ? His coming indicates, in 

the first place, that he was a man with an open mind. 

48 


COMING BY NIGHT—NICODEMUS 49 

He was a man who was willing to learn. He was a 
man who would not let his prejudice blind his eyes to 
the truth. All the other men of his class condemned 
Christ without having heard Him. They decided at 
once that they did not care to believe that He was the 
Messiah, and not wanting to believe it, they refused 
to believe it. 

It is easy to close our minds to the truth that we 
do not care to accept. It is so easy to shut our eyes 
to that which we do not wish to see. It is so easy to 
stop our ears to a message that we do not want to 
hear. And this is just as dangerous as it is easy. 
For the man who refuses to hear the truth loses his 
capacity to know. There is endless hope for any man, 
however late his start, if he is only willing to know. 
Another calls attention to the fact that George J. 
Romanes once wrote a book called “A Candid Exami¬ 
nation of Theism. 7 ’ He decided against theism. He 
reached the conclusion that there was no God. But 
his work had this one virtue, it was candid. Romanes 
was willing to learn, and there came a time when he 
reversed himself absolutely and became a devout fol¬ 
lower of Jesus Christ. 

One time a gentleman came to a man by the name 
of Nathaniel and said to him, “We have found the man 
of whom Moses, the law and the prophets did write, 
Jesus of NTazareth . 77 And Nathaniel looked at him 
in amazement and said: “Did I understand you to say 
Jesus of Nazareth ? You cannot mean that the Messiah 
came from that despised town. ‘Can any good thing 
come out of Nazareth ? 7 77 

And the man who had brought him the message did 
not argue with him. He said to him: “Come and see. 
Try it out . 77 And this man Nathaniel was a fair- 


50 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


minded man. He did put the information that he had 
received to the test and he found it true. He found 
that even from despised Nazareth there had come one 
who was at once the Lord of his own life and also of 
Heaven and earth. 

It may be that you are not a Christian. It may he 
that you have a prejudice against Christianity. It may 
he that that prejudice is founded upon a foundation as 
unreasonable as that upon which the prejudice of 
Nathaniel was founded. You may have been offended 
by those so-called followers of Jesus who have misrepre¬ 
sented Him. You may have suffered at the hands of 
one who belonged to the church. But instead of letting 
that blind you, suppose you be fair enough and candid 
enough to come to Jesus Himself. That is what Nico- 
demus did. Others of his class had condemned Him 
unheard. He said, “Before I condemn Him at least 
I will hear what He has to say. I will meet Him face 
to face. I will know what He claims and what He 
teaches.” And so this candid and honest man came to 
Jesus. 

His coming, in the second place, indicates a man who 
is in earnest. Nicodemus is a very serious man. There 
is nothing chaffy about him. He is not a mere human 
bubble. He is not a man who is capable of being satis¬ 
fied with the doctrine of eating and drinking and being 
merry. He is very serious, very genuinely in earnest, 
very determined to know the truth and to follow it if 
he can find out what the truth is. 

And mark me, the virtue of genuine earnestness is 
no mean virtue. This is especially true if you are in 
earnest about something that is worth while. It is the 
earnest man who wins his way to God. It is the earnest 
man who captures life’s real prizes. To be flippant, 


COMING BY NIGHT—NICODEMUS 51 

half-hearted, lukewarm is to surely fail to reach any 
worthy goal. It is also to he disgusting both to man 
and to God. “Because you are lukewarm and neither 
hot nor cold I am about to vomit you out 'of my mouth.” 

Then, in the third place, he is a man of a splendid 
type of courage. I know that that is not the fact about 
him that is usually emphasized. The opposite is almost 
always set in the limelight. We are very fond of lam¬ 
basting the timidity, the cowardice of this man. We 
point out sometimes with sorrow and sometimes with 
zest the fact that he came to Jesus by night. And we 
get so interested in that phrase “by night,” that we 
forget what comes ahead of it. 

The big fact is not that this man came by night. The 
big fact, the blessed fact, is that he came at all. There 
was much to hinder him. There were many things in 
the way, but in spite of all these hindrances, in spite of 
all obstacles, he did come. You may laugh at his 
cowardice. You may smile in scorn as you see him 
stealing along in the shadows. But I wonder if you 
who laugh have ever had the courage to come to Jesus 
even in the night. He may not have come with the 
open boldness that compels our admiration. But no 
fault of his manner of coming can obscure the blessed 
fact that he arrived. 

He came to Jesus by night. That is true. I agree 
that the fact that he came in the night shows that he 
was a bit timid. I think Nicodemus was afraid. I 
think every footstep that he heard that night startled 
him. I dare say that he felt himself go hot and cold 
as he passed one whom he knew and from whom he 
feared recognition. He was afraid, horribly afraid. 
And yet he came. Ho not forget that. And that shows 
a very fine type of courage. 


52 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


There are two types of courage. There are men 
who have never felt fear. There are men that would 
not recognize fear should they meet it on the street. 
They simply are utter strangers to it. They never 
have and never will make its acquaintance. I have a 
friend of that type. He revels in danger. He glories 
in a fight. He never seems quite so happy as when he 
is likely at any time to he assassinated. For this reason 
he performs even his most dangerous duty with consum¬ 
mate ease. But there is another type of courage that 
I think even more admirable. That is the courage of 
the man who is naturally a coward. It is the courage 
of the soldier whose knees were shaking under him and 
who told those knees that they would shake more than 
that if they knew where he was going to take them 
in a few minutes. I honor the man who with a bulldog 
fearlessness never knows what it is to feel his knees go 
weak. But I honor still more the man who does the 
thing that he feels that he ought to do in spite of the 
fact that fear is clutching at his heart, that his knees 
are a-tremble and that goose flesh is creeping all over 
him. Nicodemus had that fine type of courage, the 
courage that even enabled him to go to Jesus in spite 
of the fact that he was horribly afraid. 

The fact that Nicodemus came to Jesus showed, in 
the fourth place, that he was a heart-hungry man. 
Nicodemus was religious, but his religion had never 
satisfied him. He had given his life to the church, but 
the church had not quenched the deep thirsts of his soul. 
Somehow after almost a whole lifetime spent in the 
holy atmosphere of the Temple in the Holy City he was 
troubled and weary and dissatisfied. 

He had been in some measure restless and disap¬ 
pointed possibly for years, but his dissatisfaction had 


COMING BY NIGHT—NICODEMUS 58 

been deepened by bis acquaintance with Jesus. He had 
doubtless heard this young Rabbi on the streets of 
Jerusalem. His words had affected him strangely. 
They had given him a longing that was at once a pain 
and a promise. He felt that here was a man that knew 
a secret that he did not know. Here was one who 
though far younger than himself had wisdom that he 
himself had not learned. And so I see him urged on by 
his own burning thirst. I see him, lured by the hope 
that this thirst may be met by the young Prophet from 
Nazareth, making his way through the night to the 
humble abode of Jesus. 

Now frankly I am interested in the errand of this 
man. I am profoundly interested in it because I find 
myself close kin to Nicodemus. I, too, have hungers 
and thirsts that no earthly power can satisfy. I have 
needs that no human soul can meet. Possibly they can 
be met in Jesus. I am sure they cannot be met else¬ 
where. And even though I may not be sure that He 
can meet them, yet I am going to give Himself and 
myself the advantage of the doubt and make a trial. 

For this reason I am going to steal along in the 
wake of this night visitor. I am going to do this not 
that I may spy upon him; I am going to do it not that 
I may surprise him at his interview with the Y oung 
Carpenter and report him to the Pharisees. I am going 
to do it because my own heart is hungry. For this 
reason I am going to slip in through the door with him 
and share his pew in this night service and hear the 

marvelous sermon that he heard. 

Brother, suppose you go in with me. Let us slip in 
and sit beside this great teacher and listen as he listened 
to a sermon from the Greatest of all Teachers. It is a 
wonderful privilege. Nicodemus never forgot that in- 


54 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

terview. He never could forget it. He shouts over it 
yet around the steps of the Throne. 

There is a timid knock at the door. There is a 
movement on the inside, the quiet, stately steps of One 
who has heard the knocking. He comes, opens the door, 
and Nicodemus stands face to face with Jesus Christ, 
the Savior of the world. There were many things in 
the heart of this white-haired teacher that he wanted 
to ask Jesus. There was much that he wanted to say. 
He begins with the one big fact of which he is sure. 
“We know,” he says, “that thou art a teacher come from 
God.” Here is one who knows the mind and heart of 
God. And before Nicodemus can tell Him what the 
matter is, Jesus Christ has answered his question, not 
the question of his lips, but the question of his heart. 

What did He say to this man who had dared to come 
to Him through the night? He did not say to him, 
“Nicodemus, I know what the trouble is with you; you 
are not honest. Nicodemus, you must quit swearing. 
Nicodemus, you must quit Sabbath-breaking. You 
must quit breaking your marriage vows. You must 
stop yielding to the lusts of the flesh.” No, He did 
not say that to this master in Israel. Had he done so 
Nicodemus would have blazed upon Him, for he was 
guilty of none of these things. He was a clean man, a 
moral man, a religious man. 

But what Jesus did say was this: “You must be born 
again.” He said, “I know what is the matter. You 
have been trying to find peace and rest and joy and 
salvation by doctoring the outside of life. You have 
found that your well is poisonous and you have tried 
to remedy it by painting the well curb. You have 
found that the clock of life does not keep good time 
and you have spent endless care polishing the hands. 


COMING BY NIGHT—NICODEMUS 


55 


You have found the fountain of the heart sending forth 
a hitter stream and you have tried to remedy it by 
pulling up a few weeds that grew round about it. 
NTicodemus, you must he put right at heart. That is 
first. That is fundamental.” 

So Jesus declared to this pious and earnest and 
honest man the one supreme and universal necessity, 
and that is the necessity of a new birth. And remember 
that Jesus said this not to an outcast. He said this not 
to one who had wasted his substance with riotous living. 
He said it to one of the most cultured and refined and 
decent and religious men of his day. To this man’s 
heart and conscience He spoke home and said, “You 
must be horn again.” 

And I wor der if you feel disposed to resent this mes¬ 
sage. I wonder if you think that it is no longer neces¬ 
sary. I wonder if you think that it is old fashioned 
and out of date. Remember that it is Jesus who spoke 
this message. Remember these words fell from the lips 
of Him in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead 
bodily. And what He said to this man, and to all men, 
is this: “You must be horn again.” 

And when Jesus said that He not only stated man’s 
supreme necessity. He stated man’s supreme privi¬ 
lege. What a pity it is that we read this as if it were 
some terrible sentence of doom pronounced against us. 
“Ye must he horn again”—and we look at it and say, 
“Alas and alas!” Why is it ? Is it because your old 
life has been so marvelously beautiful and so eminently 
satisfactory ? Do you shrink from this doctrine because 
you are perfectly confident that you have already found 
the highest ? Why not look upon it as your supreme 
privilege instead of something to he feared and hated ? 

Christ told N’icodemus that it was his privilege to he 


56 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

born again. He told him that life might be made over 
for him even though he was old. That is marvelous in¬ 
deed. I know of nothing, not even the resurrection 
from the dead, that is so wonderful as that a man may 
be raised into spiritual life who in time past was dead 
in trespasses and in sin. And that this is a possibility 
is a fact that has been proven over and over again mil¬ 
lions of times. There is no experiment in chemistry 
that has been any more clearly demonstrated than the 
power of God to remake men has been demonstrated. 

The new birth has been experienced by the most de¬ 
praved and abandoned of men. It has been experienced 
no less radically by the most decent and moral. How 
do you account for the marvelous change that was 
wrought in Saul of Tarsus as he went that day from 
Jerusalem to Damascus ? He was not a rake. He was 
clean and upright and dead in earnest. And yet there 
came to him an experience that utterly revolutionized 
him, and in the power of that experience he changed the 
history of the world. 

Here is another man. He is a scholar. He is en¬ 
thusiastic. He is brave. He becomes a missionary and 
buries himself in the wilds of America in an effort to 
convert the Indians. But he goes home a confessed 
failure. He preaches in England and declares that he 
preached much but saw little results. And then one 
night he does trust Christ, and Christ alone for salva¬ 
tion. And he comes forth from that service to bring 
England to a new birth. So whoever you are tonight, 
I preach to you this marvelous gospel, that your su¬ 
preme necessity, your supreme possibility is a new 
birth. You must, you may be born again. 

The sermon startled N’icodemus. It made him afraid. 
“How can these things be ?” he said, in utter perplexity. 


COMING BY NIGHT—NICODEMUS 


57 


And as if in answer, the wind soughs around the cor¬ 
ner. And Jesus said, “Do you hear the wind? ‘It 
bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound 
thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither 
it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit .’ 99 
You cannot see the wind, but you can experience it.. 
You can know it for a strong and vital fact. And while 
you cannot understand all the mysteries of a new birth, 
you can understand enough to experience it. For while 
God’s part may be far beyond your comprehension, your 
part is simple enough for the understanding of a little 
child. 

How is it ? “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life.” We are reborn through faith in 
Jesus Christ. Leave off your speculations. Leave off 
your theories and accept this glorious gospel in its sweet 
simplicity. Do that and here and now you will experi¬ 
ence what Ndcodemus experienced and what countless 
multitudes that no man can number have experienced 
since then. You, too, will be born anew. 

Hicodemus was never the same after this night. He 
went out to become a follower of Jesus. He was still 
a timid follower for many days. But when his col¬ 
leagues condemned Jesus he dared speak in His de¬ 
fence. It was not as bold a speech as we might have 
desired, but he stood for Him none the less. He had 
become his friend. And when Jesus died, then at last 
he came out into full and acknowledged discipleship. 
And Christ finally succeeded in making the coward 
into a hero. 

Just so Christ can remake you and me. Have you 
ever given Him the opportunity ? Have you been born 


58 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


again, born from above? Have you experienced that 
change that is so revolutionary as to be called a passing 
out of death into life ? Have you so become a partaker 
of the divine nature that you are not committing sin ? 
Are you in the power of this new life overcoming the 
world ? Ho you here and now have the witness within 
that you are His? Or are you in the sad plight of 
those who are trying to live the new life with an old 
heart ? 

Doubtless there are many here who are utter 
strangers to this blessed experience. If so, let me insist 
that it need not be the case. How, in this service Christ 
offers you the same privilege that He offered this man 
years ago. You may be born again, now in a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye. “There is life for a look at 
the Crucified One. There is life at this moment for 
thee.” Will you claim it ? I know there are hindrances. 
I know the enemy will suggest many difficulties. I 
know cowardice will tug at you. But break away, as 
did Hicodemus, and come even though you have to 
come hounded by your fears. Christ waits to receive 
you and to remake you. For this is His sure promise: 
“Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” 


V 


THE SAINT’S SECRET—PAUL 

Galatians 2:20 

“I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet 
not I, hut Christ liveth in me: and the life that I now 
live in the flesh I live through faith in the Son of God, 
who loved me, and gave himself for me.” The Apostle 
speaks of “the life that I now live.” He is telling us 
that he is not living today as he lived on a certain yes¬ 
terday. A great change has been wrought. A wonder¬ 
ful transformation has taken place. The life that he 
now lives is as far different from the life of other years 
as light is different from darkness, as right is different 
from wrong, as Heaven is different from hell. 

What manner of life, then, is the apostle living now ? 
Answer: He is living the life of a saint. He has be¬ 
come a Christian. But what change has that wrought 
in him ? In other words, what is it to he a Christian ? 
The word is one of the most familiar in the language. 
It is one that we use constantly. Yet I am persuaded 
that there are many of us, even within the Church, who 
have but a faint conception of the vast wealth of its 
meaning. Being a Christian according to popular con¬ 
ception means, I fear, hut very little. But being a 
Christian according to the New Testament means 
much. In fact, its meaning is deeper than the deepest 
sea and higher than the heavens and wider than the 
spaces between the stars. 


59 


60 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

But what, I repeat, had becoming a Christian done 
for Paul % It had not simply made him religious. He 
was religious before he ever passed through that mar¬ 
velous experience on the road from Jerusalem to 
Damascus. You may be exceedingly religious and 
exceedingly unchristian at the same time. Neither did 
this experience end in simply giving Paul a new creed. 
It did that. Paul changed from an unbeliever to a be¬ 
liever in Christ. His views became orthodox. But a 
man may have very orthodox views about Christ and 
not be a Christian. The devil himself is entirely ortho¬ 
dox. He believes, the Word tells us, but that belief 
does not make him a saint. It only makes him shudder. 

On what ground, then, did Paul base his claim to 
being a Christian ? This is the answer: “Christ liveth 
in me.” He is a Christian by virtue of the fact that 
he is indwelt by the personal, living, reigning Christ. 
And Paul did not look upon his experience as unique. 
He expected that same experience to be the lot of every 
Christian. His prayer for the saints at Ephesus was 
that Christ might dwell in their hearts rightly. He 
reminded the Corinthians that they were the temples 
of the living God. He told the church at Colosse that 
his mission was to declare to them “the riches of the 
glory of this mystery, Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 
And he declares that anything less than Christ within 
would leave you less than a Christian. “If any man 
have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” 

“Christ liveth in me.” No claim could be more 
wonderful. Is there any way of testing the truth of it ? 
Suppose I were to say to you that the spirit of the 
artist Turner dwelleth in me. What manner of man 
would you expect me to be ? You would expect me to 
have some of his fine discernment. You would expect 


THE SAINT’S SECRET—PAUL 


61 


me to see in the sunsets something of what he saw. You 
would expect this hand of mine to have something of 
the cunning of his hand. You would expect me to 
steal “the fleece from God’s clouds and the sheen from 
God’s rivers” and the lurid flash of God’s lightning and 
fling them there upon the canvas. If I possessed only 
the eye of a hat and the skill of a ditch digger you would 
he slow to acknowledge my claim to possess the spirit 
of the great artist. 

“Christ liveth in me,” declares the apostle. Then we 
shall expect to see in the man making this amazing 
claim something of the beauty and power of Christ 
Himself. It is vain for any of us to say, “Christ liveth 
in me” and yet our lives he exactly as the lives of those 
who make no such claim. It would he vain for a world 
draped in midnight to boast of noonday splendors. I 
will tell you in vain of a fountain for the satisfying of 
the thirsts of men when my own tongue is swollen and 
my own lips are chapped and parched and dry. 

Here is a man who says, “Christ liveth in me.” If 
that is true we have a right to expect him to show forth 
something of the holiness of Christ. Christ said to his 
antagonists, “What man of you convinceth me of sin ?” 
He claimed to live above sin. Hot only so. He claimed 
to enable you and me to live above it. His name was 
to be called Jesus for the simple reason that He was 
to save His people from their sins. When John saw 
Him he pointed Him out as the Lamb of God who was 
to take away the sin of the world. He was to deliver 
men not only from the penalty of sin, but from its 
power as well. 

Did Paul enter into this experience? The Record 
shows that he did. He confesses that there was a time 
when he was a bond slave to sin. He tells us of the 


62 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


terrible agony of his awful slavery. The good that he 
wanted to do he could not do and the evil that he hated 
he did. Sin wound itself about him like the coils of a 
serpent. In the bitterness of his despair we hear him 
cry: “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver 
me?” And he found his answer in Jesus Christ. “I 
thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” a There 
is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in 
Christ Jesus. . . . The law of the Spirit of life has 
made us free.” 

This deliverance of Paul was not only a single experi¬ 
ence, but it was his continued experience. So much was 
this the case that we find him saying to his fellow dis¬ 
ciples, “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” He 
even dared to write this brave word: “Reckon ye your¬ 
selves as dead indeed unto sin; but alive unto God 
through Jesus Christ.” 

How Paul wrote constantly out of his own experi¬ 
ence. This experience had led him to believe that 
there was a possibility of complete victory over all the 
powers of the enemy. “Reckon ye yourselves to be 
dead and count yourselves as free from sin and sinning 
as dead men.” How I do not come to you this morning 
to preach fanaticism. But I do come to tell you about 
your privileges as Christian people. And one of these 
privileges, if the Hew Testament is true, is living a life 
of victory over sin. 

Where are we suffering more than we are suffering 
right here? Our lives are so mean and worldly that 
many of us have ceased to expect any power for con¬ 
quest through Christ. We enter upon the Christian 
life without any expectation of victory. A girl said 
recently in speaking of her marriage that she did not 
know how she and Tom would hit it off, but they were 


THE SAINT’S SECRET—PAUL 


63 


going to try it out. If they didn’t like it they could 
quit. What is to be expected of a marriage like that ? 
Nothing but disaster. When good people marry they 
give themselves each to other. They absolutely fore¬ 
close their minds against any other love. I have abso¬ 
lutely no patience with the married man or woman that 
makes love to or accepts it from another. I do not 
believe it is ever innocent. If you are faithful to your 
marriage vows such a thing is an impossibility to you. 

And, my brethren, we are a part of the bride of 
Christ. In giving ourselves to Him we are expected to 
close our minds and hearts against any other allegiance. 
And we are to count on victory through grace. If such 
a victory were an impossibility it would never have been 
promised. But it is promised over and over again. 
Hence it is to be claimed. 

Of course, if we are left to win this victory in our 
own strength it is nothing short of madness to expect 
to triumph. But if it is true that Christ dwells within 
us, if we have an infinitely mighty Savior homing in 
our hearts, are such expectations mad or extravagant ? 
The schoolhouse that I used to attend when a boy was 
surrounded by a forest of scrubby black oaks. When 
the frost came and loosened the grip of the leaves on 
other trees it seemed only to tighten the hold of these 
sear leaves upon the oaks. The ice and the snow and 
the winter winds were powerless to make these oak 
trees give up their burden of death. But by and by 
there was a new warmth in the atmosphere. There 
was a new note in the song of the bird. Spring came 
and slipped into the hearts of these oaks. It stole up 
through their branches. And then one day a new leaf 
said to the old dead leaf, “Make room, please/’ And 
life had come and death had gone. It had been brought 


64 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


about not by a power without, but by a power within. 
“Christ liveth in me.” Therefore I have a right to ex¬ 
pect triumph over all the power of the enemy. 

“Christ liveth in me.” Then we shall expect to find 
in this man Paul something of Christ’s attitude toward 
the world. It will be worse than vain for him to make 
this claim and be selfish and listless and indifferent. 
Christ had a passion for men. He could not see a 
crowd without holding out His hands to them and say¬ 
ing, “Come to me.” He could not pass a leper without 
putting the touch of His love upon him. A man who 
has this living Christ in his heart must be a lover. 

And here, too, Paul makes good his claim. I hear 
him wishing that he might be accursed of God for his 
brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh. Another 
time he is bearing the burdens of a runaway slave. “I 
beseech you for my son, whom I have begotten in my 
bonds, Onesimus by name. If he oweth thee anything, 
put that on my account. I, Paul, have written it with 
mine own hand, I will repay it.” Another time it is 
no longer a slave, but a king. And yet there is that 
same note of yearning and passion: “I would God that 
not only thou, but all these that hear me this day, were 
both almost and altogether such as I am except these 
bonds.” “Christ liveth in me,” declares the Apostle. 
And when we get a glimpse into his heart we say, 
“Amen and Amen.” 

The Christ did not only love. But Christ did what 
love always does. He suffered. He gave himself sacri- 
ficially to the task of saving the world. What He did 
by a single act on Calvary was what He was doing 
every day of His life. His whole ministry was bap¬ 
tized with the spirit of sacrificial service. 

“Christ liveth in me.” Then my own life shall be 


THE SAINT’S SECRET—PAUL 


65 


baptized in that same spirit. And such was the case 
with the great Apostle. “I fill up that which is behind 
of the sufferings of Christ in my body.” Paul did not 
only serve. He served sacrificially. “Master, the Jews 
have sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again ?” 

And Jesus went back the path, Dr. Jowett tells us, that 
led to the stones. And we read of him in whom Christ 
lived: “They drew him out of the city and stoned him 
and left him for dead.” But he, too, walked the path 
that led back to the stones. He was indwelt by the 
Christ who died. Therefore he himself declared that 
he “died daily.” 

We meet together this morning as Christians. As 
Christians we have a right to say, “Christ liveth in 
me.” Do we say it in the love of Christ ? Are we fill¬ 
ing up, in any measure, that which is behind of the 
sufferings of Christ ? Oh, how little of real sacrifice 
there is in the life of the ordinary member of the church 
of today. How few of us seek to please God rather 
than ourselves. In our church work many of us are 
worthless simply because we are unwilling to put our¬ 
selves to the trouble that it costs to be useful. Re¬ 
member this, that if any man hath not the Spirit of 
Christ, which is the spirit of love, which is a spirit 
that makes us willing to bleed in order to bless, he is 
none of His. 

“Christ liveth in me.” Then we shall expect that ik . 
this man’s life shall be a fruitful life. We shall expect 
that where he farms the same kind of harvest shall grow 
that grows under the farming of Christ Himself. “He 
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do 
also. And greater works than these shall he do, be¬ 
cause I go to my Bather.” And Paul’s efforts did ac¬ 
complish results. Lives were remade under his min- 


66 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


istry and the world still feels the uplift of his mighty, 
Christ-filled personality. 

“Christ liveth in me.” How did Paul come to real¬ 
ize this ? It was not by any magic. It was not by the 
works of the law. He reached it by an old and familiar 
road. “The life that I now live I live through faith 
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for 
me.” Christ had entered this life through faith. 
Christ had filled his life in response to faith. 

And this, you see, was a personal faith. “Through 
faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave him¬ 
self for me.” Experiential religion, Luther tells us, is 
in the personal pronouns. It means very little for us 
to say, “Christ died for the world.” We must come to 
where we can say, “He died for me.” It is not enough 
to say, “Christ loved the world.” We must he gripped 
by the blessed fact that “He loved me.” It is not much 
to say, “The Lord is their shepherd.” It is everything 
to say, “The Lord is my shepherd.” “He loved me 
and gave Himself for me.” Paul simply accepted 
Christ as the one infinitely mighty and infinitely will¬ 
ing to help. And clinging to Llim by faith he lived 
the life of victory over sin and of marvelous service. 

How I wonder if it is not the longing of your heart 
that this experience of the Apostle be your experience. 
“Christ liveth in me.” Has it been true ? Is it true 
today? Do you not realize with myself that you have 
not enjoyed this experience in the richness and full¬ 
ness that it is your privilege to enjoy it ? Have you not 
been a bit of a disappointment to yourself and to your 
Lord ? 

It is said that an intimate friend of the great artist 
Millais went early one morning to an art gallery to 
see a display of his paintings. As she was going up 


THE SAINT’S SECRET—PAUL 


67 


the steps she saw the artist coming down. He tried to 
avoid her, but could not. When she came face to face 
with him she saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. 
“My lady,” he said, “I am sorry that you have found 
me thus unmanned. I have just been looking at my 
early paintings. I find that they promised far more 
than I have ever attained. I have not realized my 
possibilities. That is what has broken my heart.” 
Have you realized yours ? If not, will you begin anew 
this morning ? “Behold, I stand at the door and 
knock.” As you gather round this table to take these 
symbols of the sacrificial death of our Lord, will you 
not by faith receive Him and count on Him to enter 
as He promises He will enter ? Then you, too, will be 
able to say, “Christ liveth in me.” Then you, too, will 
be able to show forth in the life you live the mighty 
power of the indwelling Christ. 


VI 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 

I Thessalonians 5: 18 

“In everything give thanks.” This exhortation sent 
by Paul to a group of his fellow Christians has a decided 
flavor of the impossible about it. The heights to which 
it calls seem far too rugged and steep for our feeble 
feet. So much is this the case that vast numbers of 
us never think of taking his great word seriously. We 
simply pass it by, confessing, of course, the reality of 
the pot of gold, but never forgetting that this gold is 
at the end of the rainbow, and is therefore quite beyond 
our reach. 

But the Apostle himself was perfectly serious and 
genuinely sincere in the giving of this exhortation. 
He believed that it was possible to make every day a 
Thanksgiving Day. Nor did he hold this high convic¬ 
tion simply as a theory. It was his experience. As 
you study his life you find him in many a trying sit¬ 
uation. At times you find him without his cloak, at 
times without his books and his parchments. You even 
find him without his freedom and without his friends. 
But never once do you find him without his song of 
thanksgiving. 

“In everything give thanks.’’ This is something 
more than a piece of good advice. Excellent advice it 
is, but it is far more. It is a command. It is a com¬ 
mand that is binding. It brings in its hands the sanc- 

68 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 69 

tion of an infinite authority. “In everything give 
thanks.” 

So we see then that gratitude is not a matter that is 
purely optional. You cannot he a Christian and be 
grateful or ungrateful just as it suits you. To refuse 
to be thankful is to refuse to be obedient. And to refuse 
to be obedient is to refuse to be a Christian at all. So 
it is only stating a sober truth when we say that it is 
impossible for a thankless man to be a follower of 
Jesus Christ. 

And you will notice the wide scope of this command. 
“In everything give thanks.” That takes in a sweep 
so wide, I repeat, that it looks utterly impossible. In 
fact, it is impossible except we receive help from 
above. God is constantly calling upon us to do the 
impossible. It was impossible for the paralyzed man 
to rise and walk, but as he was willing Christ made the 
impossible to become the possible. And so God will 
do in this instance if we will allow Him. 

“In everything give thanks.” I wonder if we have 
ever been really serious and in earnest with this com¬ 
mand. Notice what it says: “In everything.” In the 
joy things and in the sorrow things, in the laughter¬ 
laden things and in the tearful things, in the things 
bright with morning and the things dark with night. 
“In everything give thanks.” 

Now that means that we are to be thankful when we 
succeed. That we are to be grateful in the moments 
of prosperity and of victory. It means also that we are 
to be thankful when we fail. That in the midst of our 
defeat and our humiliation our hearts are to still be 
overflowing with gratitude. We are to be thankful 
when these bodies of ours are athrill with vigor and 
life. We are also to be thankful when the destroying 


70 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


hand of disease is upon us and we feel ourselves slip¬ 
ping inch by inch into the grave. 

“In everything/’ Truly it is a broad command. 
We are to be grateful when friends are kind, when they 
throw bouquets at us, when they grip our hands and 
tell us how much they appreciate us. We are to be 
thankful when friends seem unkind, when they throw 
mud at us instead of flowers, when they pass us by in 
forgetfulness and cold neglect. We are to be thankful 
beside the cradle afrolic with life. We are also to be 
thankful beside the grave gloomy with death. 

This is indeed a high standard that our Lord sets for 
us through His inspired Apostle. But it is a possible 
standard. He never calls us to do that which through 
His grace we cannot do. How can we reach that fine 
mountain height where we will really be able to “In 
everything give thanks” ? How did Paul reach it \ He 
did not do so by getting into circumstances that were 
altogether favorable. Nor will we. There will never 
come a time in our lives when everything will come 
to us right-side up. We are going to have to pass 
through sorrows and losses, struggles and perplexities. 
However dry our cheeks are today, one day they are 
going to be wet with tears. So if we never expect to 
be thankful in everything until everything gets to be 
entirely to our liking, then we will never fulfill this 
command at all. But this gratitude is not a child of 
circumstances. The truth of the matter is that grati¬ 
tude is never bom purely of our circumstances. 

For instance, the most grateful people are not the 
people who have the most. They are not the people 
who are blessed with good health and with sound minds 
and with beautiful homes and with high social circles. 
The most grateful people that I have met are often the 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 71 

ones who, so far as the world could see, had the least. 
Read the letters of Paul. He was always breaking out 
into the gladdest praise. His letters are exultant with 
thanksgiving. They ring with triumphant hallelujahs. 
This is true not because Paul had everything. He was 
being shipwrecked, stoned, hounded, whipped, im¬ 
prisoned. At last they killed him, hut they never killed 
his gratitude. 

How then, I repeat, is this amazing possibility to 
be realized ? Answer, it is to be realized through faith 
in God. Gratitude is a child of faith. If you ever get 
to the place where you can really give thanks in every¬ 
thing, you have got to have a very real and very vital 
grip of God. You have got to believe that Paul speaks 
the sober truth when he says, “All things work together 
for good to them that love God.” There will be many 
times, of course, when you do not see how the trials and 
defeats that come upon you can be for good. There 
will be many times when you cannot understand. But 
remember that it is not necessary to understand. It is 
only necessary to believe. 

When Bunyan was shut up in Bedford jail he could 
not understand just how this could be best. But God 
wanted him to preach, not simply to the men of his day, 
but to the men of all time. And so He locked in Bun- 
yan’s body that his soul might be out piloting the pil¬ 
grims over the eventful road from the City of Destruc¬ 
tion to Mt. Zion. Believe me, the rude block of marble 
must have great faith in the art and in the skill of the 
sculptor if it is to be grateful while it is undergoing the 
disturbing strokes of mallet and chisel. But if it can 
be brought to believe that the sculptor is working toward 
the liberation of the angel that is pent up within, it can, 
even for these wounding strokes, give thanks. 


72 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

Our unbelieving eyes looked out the other day and 
saw only the black clouds and the pouring rain, the 
soggy streets and the muddy roads and the water- 
soaked fields. Faith looked out and thanked God 
and sang: 


“It isn’t raining rain to me, 

It’s raining daffodils; 

In every dimpled drop I see 
Wild flowers upon the hills. 

“A cloud of gray engulfs the day; 

And overwhelms the town; 

It isn’t raining rain to me, 

It’s raining roses down. 

“It isn’t raining rain to me, 

It’s raining clover bloom. 

Where any buccaneering bee 
Can find a bed and room. 

“So a health to him who’s happy, 

And a fig to him who frets; 

It isn’t raining rain to me, 

It’s raining violets.” 

But while gratitude is a child of faith it is also a 
child that we must watch and train and develop. Grati¬ 
tude, as all other fine graces, must be cultivated. It 
must be tended and watered and watched over or it 
will die. “In everything give thanks.” Do not think 
that Paul reached this fine height without a struggle. 
Do not expect to do so yourself. You are not going to 
do that easily. You are not going to do it lazily and 
half asleep. You will never realize that high achieve¬ 
ment except by conscious effort. 

FTow how can we help ourselves in the cultivation of 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 73 


this rare and winsome flower called gratitude ? In the 
first place, if you are going to be thankful in every¬ 
thing you cannot begin to do that by ignoring the daily 
blessings of life which we are accustomed to call com¬ 
monplace. And yet that is just what most of us have 
a great tendency to do. 

Some time ago I chanced to meet an old friend who 
had been a great sufferer from a most dreaded disease. 
But he was then recovered and in perfect health. His 
dreary days of depression and long nights of wretched¬ 
ness had passed. And how happy he was. His very 
presence refreshed like sea breezes. He was simply 
bubbling over with gladsome praise and thanksgiving. 
But when I told an excellent woman about this meet¬ 
ing and the great gratitude of our friend what think 
you she said ? This: “Of course ! I would be thankful, 
too, if I had recovered from that terrible disease.” Yet 
she seemed to forget to thank God that she had never 
even been sick at all. 

Did you ever hear of that morning when the sun did 
not rise ? One day—but it was not day. Six o’clock 
came and no roses bloomed in that far garden of the 
East. Seven o’clock came and still no sun and no ray 
of light. Then eight, then nine, then ten, then noon 
and at noon it was as black as midnight. At noon no 
bird sang. There was only the hoot of the owl and 
the swoop of the bat. The world lay dark and silent 
and asleep. 

Then came the black hours of the black afternoon. 
And there was no sunset because there was no sunrise. 
And there was no retiring to bed where the weary sleep 
the “sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care.” 
Instead people remained wide awake. Some wept, 
some wrung their hands in anguish. Every church was 


74 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


thronged to its doors with people upon their knees* 
Thus they remained the whole night through and then 
millions of eager and tear-wet faces were turned toward 
the east. And when the sky began to grow red and the 
sun looked up once more, there went up a shout of 
great joy that was fairly echoed from star to star, 
kow a hundred million lips said, “Bless the Lord, O 
my soul.” 

Why were these people so thankful ? It is the strang¬ 
est reason in the world. They were thankful because 
the sun failed to rise for one whole day. And thus the 
very constancy of God’s blessings sometimes seems to 
kill our gratitude. We are so like little children. Take 
your child a toy every day when you go home and it will 
not be two weeks before he will cease to appreciate it, 
will even feel himself wronged if it fails in a single 
instance to come. 

Cultivate then the fine habit of being thankful for 
life’s daily blessings. Appreciate God’s mercies that 
are new every morning. Commonplace as they seem 
they are the blessings without which life would not be 
worth the living. Appreciate the sunrises and the sun¬ 
sets, the springtimes and the autumntides, the comforts 
of home, the handclasp of friends, the confidence of 
associates, the clinging love of the inner circle. Appre¬ 
ciate the open Bible, the Church with its welcome, the 
constant invitation to the place of prayer and the wide 
open gateway into the Father’s house. 

“In everything give thanks.” If we do this we must, 
in the second place, fling away our pride and self- 
sufficiency and conceit. Did you ever notice how prone 
we are to blame others for our misfortune and to thank 
ourselves for our good fortune? The Rich Fool made 
a fine crop, but he congratulated nobody but himself. 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 75 

He thanked only his own prudence and keenness and 
sagacity. 

How different was Paul. Having returned from a 
successful missionary journey lie does not relate what 
he has done, hut what God has done through him. 
Preaching before Agrippa and the great crowd in 
Caesarea he does not boast of the wisdom that has en¬ 
abled him to live in spite of bitter enemies. But he 
says: “Having therefore obtained help of God I con¬ 
tinue unto this day.” When accounting for himself 
this alone is his claim: “By the grace of God I am 
what I am.” 

May the Lord teach us a like wisdom. For what 
have I, what have you that we have not received ? Have 
you ability in any direction? Are you physically at¬ 
tractive ? Have you beauty ? It is no mean gift. Have 
you strength of mind and of body ? Have you a task, 
a place to work and skill to fill your place? If so, 
appreciate it. Remember that you have not simply 
yourself to thank for it. The truth of the matter is 
that there is not a single blessing that you possess today 
for which you have only yourself to thank. 

If you have a tendency to self-conceit, ask yourself 
how much would be left if God took from you every¬ 
thing except what is due to yourself alone. If He 
should do so, civilization would be gone. You did not 
make it. This city would vanish. You did not build 
it. The sun would suddenly go out in the sky; the stars 
would vanish; this solid earth would drop like an 
anchor into the sea; the sea would vanish; your body 
would melt into thin air and your immortal soul would 
be annihilated. So if there is a single thing you value 
this morning give thanks for it because it comes to you 
as a gift. 


76 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


Then if you are going to be grateful in everything 
you must, in the third place, refuse to allow the bless¬ 
ings of others to make you despise your own. It is 
strange that we should be so foolish and so wicked as to 
do this and yet we often are. Saul appreciated the 
praise that was given to him till he found that David 
had greater praise. You appreciated the little daisy 
that w T as put into your hand till you saw that a friend 
of yours had an American Beauty rose. You enjoyed 
your Ford till your friend began to ride in a Packard. 
Oh, you will never be grateful in that way. 

N”ow, if you are obliged to contrast, contrast yourself 
as you are today with what you might have been but for 
the good and tender mercy of your Lord. Do you re¬ 
member the demoniac that Jesus healed ? He wanted to 
go with the Master, you remember, but Jesus sent him 
home. Do you suppose this man thought of John lean¬ 
ing upon the bosom of Jesus and plucked up the flower 
of gratitude and planted the nettle of envy in its place ? 
Ho, I rather think that when he was so tempted he 
thought of the tombs in which he used to live and of 
the fetters with which men used to try to bind him and 
of the demons that once possessed him. And thinking 
of these things the nightingales of gratitude began to 
sing in the garden of his heart. 

Last of all, if you are going to be thankful in every¬ 
thing you must cultivate the habit of giving expression 
to your thanks. That is what Paul did. He was for¬ 
ever telling his Lord and telling his friends how thank¬ 
ful he was. Constantly he was giving expression to his 
gratitude. And the more he gave expression to it the 
more thankful he became. For we are rich in the fine 
wealth of gratitude just in proportion as we give it 
away. 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 77 


Of course those of us who never praise have a good 
excuse for our silence. Here it is:—God knows or our 
friends know that we are grateful. But that is not 
enough. God desires that we “give thanks.” And we 
in this particular are like our Lord. How many starved 
hearts there are in the world because we fail to give 
expression to our gratitude. And how many of us allow 
our gratitude to become weak and sickly and often 
utterly dead because we fail to give expression to it. 

One time a most wonderful preacher visited a certain 
village. In that village there were ten men who were 
dying of a hideous and loathsome disease. These 
wretched men formed themselves into a committee and 
asked this preacher for help. And the heart of the 
preacher was tender and his power great. So he re¬ 
sponded to this committee of rottenness by healing them 
every one. This done, nine of them said: “He knows 
how grateful I am.” And having so said they hurried 
away and ceased to he grateful at all. The tenth man 
came and fell down at his Savior’s feet, giving Him 
thanks. And when he arose he had tenfold more grati¬ 
tude than he had when he came. Therefore I urge, 
“Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” 

How what is the good of being grateful? “In every¬ 
thing give thanks.” Why? The Apostle gives just one 
bis: reason. “This is the will of God.” That is reason 
enough, is it not? He said be thankful in everything 
because God wants you to be. That is the way and the 
only way to please Him. 

Why does our gratitude please God? First, because 
it is a mark of Christian growth in ourselves. Grati¬ 
tude is a test of character. Ho baby is grateful. You 
can take your little fellow when he has the colic and 
walk the floor with him for seven long hours, and then 


78 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


when you put him down he will never say “Much 
obliged.” He will just yell a little louder. Now we 
do not blame him, simply because he is a baby. But to 
continue to be ungrateful is to always be an infant. 
If you have no gratitude in your heart this morning 
that shows in itself that you are a moral dwarf. You 
may have the body of a giant and the mentality of a 
Shakespeare but you have the soul of a pigmy. 

To be a thankful Christian is pleasing to God, in 
the next place, because to be grateful is one of the road¬ 
ways to usefulness. Gratitude makes you helpful. It 
makes you helpful because it begets gratitude in others. 
Did you ever turn away from seeing some sick body 
who had neither health nor money nor social position 
and yet was full of gratitude? And you said to your¬ 
self: “Just look what I have. How thankful I ought 
to be.” And you were helped toward gratitude by the 
gratitude of another. 

Then we are helpful in other ways. How a little 
gratitude strengthens us sometimes. How much better 
we work when we know we are appreciated. Oh, I 
fancy that all the machinery of this world would run 
with infinitely greater smoothness if we would just oil 
it now and then with the fine oil of appreciation. We 
think lovely things. We say lovely things when folks 
are dead. But the trouble is we so often keep them 
secret while they are alive. 

One day you look over the way and see crepe on the 
door of your friend. You hurry over to where he lies 
asleep and spill a thousand grateful words into an ear 
that does not hear and into a heart that is not helped. 
But how much you might have helped if you had been 
in time. That was the fine thing about Mary. She 
gave expression to her appreciation and she did it on 


PERPETUAL THANKSGIVING—PAUL 79 

time. “She came aforetime/’ said the Master. That 
is, Mary with love’s intuition saw Death coming in the 
distance, and she said, “I will heat Death to Him.” 
And she did. So when Death touched His forehead it 
made even his old frozen fingers smell of perfume. 
This because Mary had been on time in giving ex¬ 
pression to her gratitude. 

“If I should die tonight. 

My friends would look upon my quiet face 
Before they laid it in its resting-place. 

And deem that death had left it almost fair. 

And laying snow-white flowers upon my hair. 

Would smooth it down with lingering caress— 

Poor hands, so empty and so cold tonight! 

“If I should die tonight, 

My friends would call to mind, with loving thought, 
Some kindly deed the icy hand had wrought, 

Some gentle word the frozen lips had said— 

Errands on which the willing feet had sped; 

The memory of my selfishness and pride, 

My hasty words, would all be put aside, 

And so I should be loved and mourned tonight. 

“O friends, I pray tonight, 

Keep not your kisses for my dead cold brow. 

The way is lonely; let me feel them now. 

Think gently of me; I am travel-worn, 

My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn. 
Forgive! O hearts estranged, forgive, I plead! 

When ceaseless bliss is mine I shall not need 
The tenderness for which I long tonight.” 

Then gratitude is pleasing to God because God is a 
lover and love always wants to be appreciated. Under¬ 
stand, love will live without it, but it lives in grief and 
pain and disappointment. If you love anybody the 


80 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


keenest wound that they can inflict upon you is the 
wound of ingratitude. The high-water mark of Eng¬ 
lish tragedy is King Lear. And what is the climax of 
this tragedy? It is the father learning “how sharper 
than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” 

Did you ever read of how those that feared the Lord 
spoke about it and how a hook of remembrance was 
kept? I wonder if the recording angel will be able 
to write your name and mine this morning in the 
gilded volume of those who are thankful. Believe me, 
you can bring no greater joy to your Lord than the 
fulfilling of this command: “In everything give 
thanks.” 


VII 


THE FIELD PREACHER—THE LILY 

Mattheiv 6:28-29 

“Consider tlie lilies of the field, how they grow; they 
toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, 
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these.” Today, with the Master as our inter¬ 
preter, we are going to attend church in the open 
fields. We are going away from the feverish and rest¬ 
less life of the city out into that great temple of the 
out-of-doors. We are going to that church whose dome 
is the sky, and whose carpet is the green earth, and 
whose walls are the far-flung horizons, and whose music 
is the sighing of the wind mingled with the song of 
the birds. And there we are going to listen reverently 
and attentively and hopefully, I trust, to a winsome 
field preacher whose name is The Lily. 

As we enter this magnificent church in the open 
we are at once impressed by the personality of the 
preacher. “How attractive,” we say to ourselves. 
“ H ow wonderfully magnetic.” In spite of our natural 
listlessness and spiritual stupidity we become eager and 
attentive. We find ourselves tingling with a delightful 
thrill of expectancy. 

What is the secret of the compelling loveliness of 
this preacher ? The Master, who above all others has 
the seeing eye and the understanding heart, is lavish 
in His praise: “Verily I say unto you that even Solo¬ 
mon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” 


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Of course there are many of us too blind to agree with 
Him. If we saw a lily and Solomon standing together 
we would doubtless give all our attention to Solomon. 
That is true from the simple fact that so many of us 
are more interested in the counterfeit than in the gen¬ 
uine. We like tinsel better than we do real gold. We 
thrill more over glass heads than we do over diamonds. 
We prefer the glow worm to the star. 

What then, I repeat, is the glory of the lily? It is 
not in its richness of adornment. It is not in the 
wealth of what it has in its pocket. A man of great 
wealth and of little character said indignantly, “I’ll 
have you to understand that I am worth a million 
pounds.” “Yes,” was the reply, “but not a cent more.” 
That is, you are worth only the money that you possess. 
In yourself you are worth nothing. All your wealth is 
external to you. Yours is not the wealth of the glory 
of the lily. 

Its glory did not consist, in the second place, in its 
rank. The Master did not call attention to the beauty 
of the flower pot in which the lily grew. He did not 
bid us consider what a skilled piece of work the flower 
pot was, how showily it was gilded. He did not call 
attention to the lily because it bloomed in the temple 
or on the steps of the throne. Its glory was not a glory 
of rank. It was not a glory of position. That is the 
only glory that some people ever get. Apart from the 
glory of the rank to which they were born they have 
no glory at all. 

Its glory did not consist of its social position. Our 
attention is not directed to the lily because of its aristo¬ 
cratic neighbors. It may have had the most select social 
circle. It may have had a Marechal Heil and an 
American Beauty as its next-door neighbors, or it may 


THE FIELD PREACHER—THE LILY 83 

have rubbed elbows on one side with the sour dock and 
on the other side with a rag weed. Nettles and night¬ 
shade may have flourished in the same block. But its 
glory was not a glory of its social position. The glory 
that it possessed was inherent in itself. 

What was this glory? First of all, it was the glory 
of naturalness. When you stood in the presence of this 
lily preacher you were impressed with its sincerity, its 
utter freedom from affectation and cant. You could 
not believe that it was simply putting on a lily face to 
hide a dog fennel heart. You could not believe that 
thorns were hidden behind its velvet. You were im¬ 
pressed at once that it was just what it seemed to be 
and no more. 

What a fine virtue is genuineness, frankness, open- 
hearted sincerity! How repellent is counterfeit, hypoc¬ 
risy, insincerity! What poor creatures we become 
when we try to pose as other than we are and to im¬ 
press people as being what we are not. There is some¬ 
thing so restful and helpful and genuinely charming 
about one whom you can know to be transparently sin¬ 
cere and true. 

The second glory of the lily is the glory of un¬ 
spottedness. You could not get into its presence with¬ 
out being impressed and arrested and even made heart 
hungry by its purity. And while the word u good 1 has 
fallen upon evil days, while from misuse it is thor¬ 
oughly decrepit and lame upon its feet—still this re¬ 
mains true, that genuine goodness, thorough unspotted¬ 
ness is the most winsome virtue that this world knows. 

It is said that the mission workers in the East End 
of London used to always carry a white flower. And 
one night when one of these mission workers was sit¬ 
ting talking to an outcast woman to the surprise of 


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the worker the woman suddenly began to weep. And 
when the missionary sought to know the reason, the 
outcast touched the petals of the flower with a faded 
finger and said, “I am not like that. I used to be like 
that.” Against the white unspottedness of the flower 
she saw her own soiled and dirty life. 

The lily is unspotted. What a virtue is that in the 
teacher. What a supreme requirement in the 
preacher! It is the one requirement without which 
he can never be at his best. He may fail in culture. 
He may fail in eloquence. He may fail in a thousand 
ways, but if he succeeds in this he will not be without 
a hearing and men will be helped as they hear him. 

And let us not forget that the same God who gives 
spotlessness to the lily can and will give it to you and 
me. He is able and there is no other who is able. This 
word comes from the Divine lips and from no other 
lips: “Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as 
white as snow.” Bud Robinson tells us this bit of his 
hospital experience. He was in most intense pain. 
He had the nurse ’phone certain saintly friends to pray 
for him. Ease came at once and he went to sleep. 
While asleep he dreamed that he was in Heaven. One 
came to lead him into the presence of Christ. In that 
presence he had a vision of his own heart. He said, “It 
was a white heart. It was whiter than snow.” And 
this, thank God, is the high privilege that He offers to 
every one of us. 

So you see we have in this field preacher the very 
graces that we most need and most desire for ourselves. 
Is it not fine when you can believe that the man who 
preaches to you and teaches you, that the man who is 
trying to lead you really knows that of which he 
speaks ? Would it not be great if every preacher could 


THE FIELD PREACHER—THE LILY 


85 


say, as did Saint Paul, “Follow me as I follow Christ” ? 
How splendid it would be if we could always say, “All 
these graces of which I am speaking to you are actual 
experiences in my own life!” 

Inasmuch then as this lily has arrived, we would like 
to know how it arrived. Suppose the preacher tells his 
experience. And we look down into the face of this 
lovely flower and say, “You are sincere. You are 
guileless. You are unspotted. You are winsome and 
fragrant. How did you come to be what you are? Is 
there not magic in it? Were you touched by some 
wonderful wand and made suddenly into what you 
are ?” 

And what says the lily? It shakes its lovely head: 
“Ah, no; there is no magic in it. I grew. ‘Consider 
the lilies how they grow . 7 ” Then we say in surprise, 
“There was a time when you were not as beautiful as 
you are today ?” “Ah, yes,” comes the ready answer. 
“I was once only a little bulb. And then there was a 
time when I was even more insignificant than that. I 
have arrived to where I am today not all at once, but 
little by little. 

“And there is another fact you must not forget,” 
says the lily. “And that is that while I grew I did 
not do so independently. The words of Paul are tre¬ 
mendously true for me, ‘For to me to live is Christ.’ 
Back of my birth is God. It was through Him that 
I began to live. It is through Him that I have con¬ 
tinued to live. He is the source of all my beauty. You 
see this garment that I wear. Human fingers never 
wove one so beautiful. It was woven by His hands. 
It is from Him that all my growth has come. It is in 
His soil that I rooted myself and it is His sun that 
has warmed me and lighted my way.” 


86 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

And what the lily is trying to tell us is that we too 
may grow. When we study the lives of the conspicuous 
saints we see that they did not attain all at once. They 
grew. The Apostle John—what does his name suggest 
to you ? It suggests love. It is the name that has 
come to have a tender caress in it, and yet John was 
not always an apostle of love. Who is that man there 
interfering with the religious work of his brother ? 
“We saw one casting out devils in thy name and we 
forbade him because he followed not us.” Who said 
that? John said it—John, the beloved Apostle. 

Here is another scene. Jesus is on His way to Jeru¬ 
salem. He seeks to spend the night at a little Samari¬ 
tan village. But the people are ignorant and full of 
prejudice. They are blind to their opportunity. They 
refuse their hospitality to the Master and His disciples. 
Some of the company do not take the refusal with 
Christian sweetness. “Shall we command fire to come 
down from Heaven and destroy them ?” asked one. 
Who wanted to burn these poor misguided and ignorant 
folks ? That man was John, John who afterward be¬ 
came the Apostle of Love and whose very message to 
the world can almost be summed up in this sentence: 
“Brethren, love one another.” The secret of John is 
that he grew. 

How, that is the secret of this lily preacher. And 
as we see its winsomeness we too would like to grow. 
So as we lean forward toward this fascinating preacher 
this is what our hearts are saying: “I wonder how you 
managed to grow. I wonder how it came to pass that 
you won that ‘fulfilling sense of glad obedience that 
made thee all that nature meant thee.’ Did you get 
restless and worried and anxious? Did you fret your¬ 
self into growth and beauty ?” 


THE FIELD PREACHER—THE LILY 


87 


“No,” answered the lily. “I did not grow by worry¬ 
ing about it. I have not attained the height to which 
I have attained through anxiety.” The secret of the 
lily is its restfulness, its utter freedom from worry. It 
did not attain perfection by fretting itself into a fever. 
And you will not and I will not. This lily preaches 
a wonderfully convincing sermon against our care-filled 
and harassed and troubled lives. It tells us that we 
will never find peace, that we will never find victory, 
that we will never really grow till we trust God enough 
to stop our fretting and our worrying. 

Neither did the lily grow by squaring its jaw and 
making a great determination to grow. Had it said 
one day, “Go to now, I am going to do some growing,” 
and then had measured itself every morning and every 
night and kept its finger on its pulse, I doubt if it 
would have ever grown. There is a law known as the 
law of indirection which means that the best way to 
attain is the indirect way. For instance, the best way 
to go to sleep is to forget all about trying to go to 
sleep. The harder you try the wider awake you be¬ 
come. The best way to he happy is not to work your¬ 
self into a fever trying to amuse yourself. It is to for¬ 
get your own happiness in an effort to bring happiness 
to others. And the best way to grow is not to quit 
everything else and give yourself up to an attempt to 
grow. 

How did this lily grow? First, it grew by being 
submissive to the Divine will. Had you sat down beside 
this lily and talked to it it might have said to you 
after this fashion: “There was once a time when I 
rebelled at the very thought of being a lily. I wanted 
to be a sunflower. Then I saw that big oak standing 
yonder and thought how much longer it would last than 


88 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


I would last and I wanted to be an oak. It cut me to 
the heart that I would only live for one short season. 
But by and by I came to realize that if God had wanted 
me for an oak He would have made me one. I realized 
that the best and wisest thing for me was to be in glad 
submission what God intended me to be. 

“But even after this my fight was not over. One 
day when I had made up my mind to be a lily and be 
content with the lot of lilyhood, just then something 
else happened that disturbed me greatly. Somebody 
came and dug up my neighbor and I learned that he 
placed it in a lovely pot and carried it into a church. 
And then I wondered why I had to stay here in this 
lonely spot. I knew of some lilies that bloomed in the 
royal gardens where hundreds saw them every day. 
And when I read, Tull many a flower is born to blush 
unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air/ I re¬ 
belled and grew restless and wretched because that 
seemed to be my lot. But I have learned better now/’ 
said the lily with glad face, “and I am happy to be 
what I am and where I am.” 

And now I wonder if you have become thus wise ? 
There was a time, possibly, when you were much dis¬ 
satisfied that you were yourself. And you wondered 
why you could not have been another with another’s 
opportunity and another’s ability. And there was a 
time when your lot vexed you and almost broke your 
heart and you did not understand why it was that while 
others were given the privilege of serving in some con¬ 
spicuous way, your lot seemed to be to suffer in ob¬ 
scurity and in silence. Your eyes were bent upon far 
horizons, but the hand of Providence held you back. 
You wanted to go into the big world beyond the hills 
and you have been forced to stay where you are. 


THE FIELD PREACHER—THE LILY 


89 


I wonder if yon have learned that God’s way is best. 
I wonder if having learned to sing, “I’ll go where you 
want me to go,” you have also learned this finer song: 

“I’ll stay where you’ve put me, I will, dear Lord, 

Though I wanted so badly to go. 

I was eager to march at the battle front, 

I wanted to lead them, you know. 

I planned to keep step to the music loud. 

To cheer when the banner unfurled, 

To stand in the midst of the fight straight and proud, 
When the enemy’s darts were hurled— 

But I’ll stay where you’ve put me. 

“I’ll stay where you’ve put me, I will, dear Lord, 
Though the field be narrow and small, 

And the ground lies fallow and the stones are thick 
And there seems to be no life at all. 

The field is thine own—only give me the seed. 

And I’ll sow it with never a fear; 

I’ll till the dry soil while I wait for the rain 
And rejoice when the green blades appear. 

I’ll stay where you’ve put me. 

“I’ll stay where you’ve put me, I’ll work, dear Lord, 

I’ll bear the day’s burden and heat, 

Always trusting thee fully. When evening is come 
I’ll lay heavy sheaves at thy feet. 

And then when my life work is ended and done, 

In the light of eternity’s glow— 

Life’s record all closed I surely shall find 
’Twas better to stay than to go— 

So I’ll stay where you’ve put me.” 

“A second lesson I learned,” said the lily, “was the 
lesson of appropriation. I waited a long time for 
something wonderful, something out of the ordinary to 
happen. I thought maybe an angel might come one 
day with a golden pitcher to give me a drink. I thought 


90 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


one day some marvelous new light might appear in the 
sky to give me warmth and brightness. But I have 
ceased to either expect or desire these. I have learned 
simply to take what God gives day by day and night by 
night. And you know since I have learned that I have 
never wanted. 

“Every night, you see, I drink from the mystic 
chalice of the dew. Every morning the sun bursts with 
new glad radiance upon me. Also in proportion as I 
have need I receive the gentle baptism of the rain. 
Meantime rare nuggets of beauty are placed in my 
hands by the rich loam of the garden. And I have 
learned from my own experience that my God shall 
‘supply all my needs according to His riches in glory.’ ” 

And do we not need amidst the fitful fever of our 
lives to learn this lesson of appropriation ? How much 
God longs to give us and how little we are willing to 
take! He wants to make us rich and we insist on 
remaining miserably poor. He wants to make us kings 
and we insist on remaining slaves. Oh, that we might 
learn from the lily’s lips that “He that spared not His 
own Son, but freely offered Him up for us all will also 
with Him freely give us all things”! 

“Then I have one other blessed secret that God has 
taught me,” said the lily. “When I first began to grow 
I was very happy. Then the bees began to buzz about 
me and now and then the humming birds would come 
and the toilers in the field would look upon me and 
the winds would seem to be trying to steal all my per¬ 
fume. And I became afraid I would have nothing left. 
I tried to veil my face and shut my hands so as to hold 
the wealth that God had given me. But I had no 
sooner begun that than I discovered that I was wither¬ 
ing. Today”—and the lily laughed outright—“I offer 


THE FIELD PREACHER—THE LILY 91 

myself to all comers. Every bird and bee is welcomed 
and I try to look as sweet and fresh and spotless for a 
beggar as I would for a king. I have learned that the 
fine art of living is the art of giving.” 

And if there is a most important truth in the sermon 
of the lily I suppose this is it. One reason we have not 
grown is because we have been unwilling to serve, un¬ 
willing to give. Remember that it is literally true, 
that “he that saveth his life shall lose it.” If God has 
blessed you with ability, use it. If God has blessed 
you with opportunity, use it. If God has blessed you 
with a vision of His face, tell that vision for His glory. 
If God has put money in your hands dedicate it to Him. 
Submit yourself to His will. Open your heart to re¬ 
ceive what He longs to give you. Open your hands to 
pass on to others what He longs to give them. And 
you will approach more and more to the winsome beauty 
of the lily. 

And then this last word. And the preacher is speak¬ 
ing solemnly and yet with a brave and submissive cheer. 
And this is the message: “God has done all this for me 
though I am to live but for one day. ‘Today I am and 
tomorrow I am cast into the oven. Will He not much 
more do this for you, O ye of little faith?’ You are 
to live forever. You are to live when the stars have 
fallen like unripe figs and when ‘this world has dropped 
like an anchor in the sea.’ Depend upon it, therefore, 
that the God who gives such surpassing beauty to the 
lily that blooms for a day, will give a yet surer and 
greater beauty to you human flowers that bloom through 
all eternity.” Therefore, “Consider the lilies how they 
grow; they toil not neither do they spin: and yet I 
say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was 
not arrayed like one of these.” 


VIII 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 

Matthew 25:15-30 

My subject is not original. It was suggested by that 
delightful essayist, Frank Boreham. In the course of a 
walk one day, he tells us, he came upon a lovely garden. 
In the center of this garden was a strikingly ugly scare¬ 
crow. Its weather-beaten garments hung about it in 
horrid awkwardness. Its worn-out hat was tilted at 
that ungainly angle that denotes disgraceful drunken¬ 
ness. Its ghastly arms were outstretched as if to gather 
to its embrace any luckless individual who would dare 
to trespass upon the premises it had been set to guard. 

But what filled this essayist with wonder and delight 
was this: a blackbird was sitting upon each one of the 
outstretched arms of this appalling scarecrow. These 
fortunate birds were looking complacently and trium¬ 
phantly down at the strawberries that were ripening at 
their feet. They had already had a very wholesome 
banquet, and they would enjoy another as soon as their 
hunger demanded it. I am not sure that he tipped his 
hat to these wise birds, but in his heart he gave them 
great applause. 

But all the birds that he saw in his walk were not in 

the strawberry patch. There were some perched upon 

the fence posts. Others were upon telegraph poles. 

Others chirped disconsolately from tree-tops. All of 

them seemed to look hungrily and longingly at the 

92 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 93 

juicy berries that were ripening about the feet of the 
scarecrow. There was the most delightful food within 
their reach, hut they were not getting a single berry. 
The reason they were not doing so was because they 
were frightened away by the terrible effigy that stood 
guard in the center of the garden. 

Now when I read that story my memory literally 
began to swarm with scarecrow stories. They came to 
me out of my own experience and out of the experience 
of others. I thought of them in literature. I thought 
of the ones I had read in the Word of God. Some wise 
man could compile a small library made up exclusively 
of scarecrow stories. 

But the best scarecrow story I know is one that fell 
from the Master’s lips. We read it in the twenty-fifth 
chapter of St. Matthew. “Bor the kingdom of Heaven 
is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his 
own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And 
unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to 
another one; to every man according to his several 
ability; and straightway took his journey. Then he 
that had received the five talents went and traded with 
the same, and made them other five talents. And like¬ 
wise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 
But he that had received one went and digged in the 
earth, and hid his lord’s money. 

“After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, 
and reckoneth with them. And so he that had received 
five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, 
Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents : behold I 
have gained beside them five talents more. His lord 
said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; 
thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make 
thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy 


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of thy lord. He also that had received two talents 
came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two 
talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside 
them. His lord said unto him, Well done, good and 
faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few 
things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter 
thou into the joy of thy lord. 

“Then he which had received the one talent came 
and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, 
reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where 
thou hast not strewed. And I was afraid, and went 
and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast 
that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, 
Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I 
reap where I sowed not, and gathered where I have not 
strewed. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my 
money to the exchanges, and then at my coming I 
should have received mine own with usury. Take there¬ 
fore the talent from him, and give it unto him which 
hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall 
he given, and he shall have abundance; but from him 
that hath not shall be taken away even that which he 
hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer 
darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
teeth.” 

There are three characters in this story. Two of 
them thrill us with delight and admiration. It is an 
inspiration to see their strong purposefulness. We love 
to watch their strenuous and intelligent endeavor. 
Above all else we are delighted to see them come for¬ 
ward on the day of reckoning each having doubled his 
original store. Our hearts sing with their hearts as we 
hear the words of their master: “Well done, good and 
faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 95 

things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter 
thou into the joy of thy lord .’ 7 

But the third man fills us with pain and shame and 
pity. He makes no effort. He wins no prize. He is 
greeted with no commendation from his master. In¬ 
stead, his talent is taken from him. He is hound hand 
and foot and flung out into the dark. Hot in all the 
wide world could you find a more pathetic failure 
than he. 

Why the difference between these men ? Why the 
difference between the birds of which we spoke ? While 
these two brave blackbirds are eating the choice berries 
of the garden, I question with a third that is looking 
at them hungrily from a safe perch on the bough of a 
neighboring tree. “Have you had any berries this 
morning ?” “Ho,” he replies with a whine that 

almost has a sob in it. “Why is that ?” I ask. “Were 
they all parched by the drouth or killed by the frost ?” 
“Ho,” he answers. “There are enough berries over 
yonder fifty feet away to last me a lifetime.” Then 
I reply, “Why in the name of all that is reasonable do 
you not go to dinner ?” And he points to the scare¬ 
crow and says: “There! I am afraid of that.” And 
then I say: “What a foolish bird you are.” 

But why call this bird foolish? For the simple 
reason that he will allow himself to be robbed of the 
prizes he most covets by a harmless scarecrow. He 
permits himself to be cheated by such groundless fears. 
He sits and starves, not because there is nothing to eat, 
but because he is too cowardly to claim his privileges. 
And of the same type was the man of one talent. He 
failed not because he had no chance. He failed not for 
lack of ability. He failed because he was afraid. “I 
was afraid.” He was defeated by a few scarecrows. 


96 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

What were some of the scarecrows that robbed this 
poor fellow ? First there was the scarecrow of his own 
seeming littleness. He was very proud of his talent 
till he met a man one day who had two talents. Then 
later he met another man who had five. Then he said: 
“These men are far more capable than I. They have 
so much more ability. If I had ten talents I would do 
big things myself, but as I have only one there is no 
use for me to try.” 

What a common scarecrow this is. How many of 
us have been frightened into utter uselessness by the 
thought of our own insignificance. We say if we could 
sing as well as John McCormack, or if we could preach 
as well as Paul, if we had as much money as Henry 
Ford we would turn the world upside down. But in¬ 
asmuch as we are what we are and inasmuch as we have 
w T hat we have, we will do nothing at all. That is 
exactly the same scarecrow that kept the ten spies out 
of the Land of Promise. They told themselves that 
they did not count. “We were in our own eyes as grass¬ 
hoppers.” 

How I am not urging you to any sense of self-im¬ 
portance or conceit. I am not encouraging you to be¬ 
lieve as did the old-time cock that the sun rises every 
morning to hear you crow. A few people fail from 
over-estimating themselves, but far more fail from 
thinking too meanly of themselves. Besides, you are 
not to be judged according to your accomplishment. 
You are to be judged according to your faithfulness. 
You are not going to be questioned as to what you 
would have done with ten talents. You are going to 
be questioned upon what you actually did with one. 
Do not let the scarecrow of your own smallness cheat 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 97 

you of the highest possible success—that of being 
faithful. 

A second scarecrow that this man saw in the garden 
was that of unfavorable circumstances. He said, “If I 
were living anywhere else except where I am, I could 
easily make my one talent into two. If I had some 
other market in which to do business, if I were living 
in yesterday or in tomorrow instead of this prosaic 
today, I could do something. But since I am living as 
I am and where I am, there is no chance.” So the 
strawberries rotted and he never tasted a one of them. 

And here are you tonight. You have heard the 
Gospel since your earliest recollections. You have 
always expected to be a Christian some time. It is 
your ambition in a hazy sort of way to serve. But 
the time that you are going to do that is tomorrow. 
And the place you are going to do that is anywhere 
except here. This church is so big, it is so crowded, 
it is so full of strangers it doesn’t need you. You will 
wait, therefore, and fling away your today in the vain 
hope that in some other time and in some other place 
you will find a life of Christian service altogether easy. 
Thus you are frightened into uselessness by the scare¬ 
crow of circumstances. 

The third scarecrow that kept this man out of the 
garden was a mistrust of his lord. Listen to what he 
thinks of him: “I knew that thou art a hard man, 
taking up that thou layest not down and gathering 
where thou hast not sowed.” In other words his master 
is not fair. He is not just. He is not going to give 
him a square deal. 

NTow this man is not in a class by himself. There are 
not a few who feel just that way about Jesus Christ. 


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We may not be bold enough to say so. We may not 
think quite clearly enough to state it in plain words 
as this man did. Yet the fact remains that we mis¬ 
trust the fairness and the justice of our Lord. We 
hear His promises and refuse to accept them as true. 
“Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast 
out/’ He says. And yet we doubt the fact that He will 
receive ourselves. 

Or we have a fear that He has set for us a task that 
we cannot accomplish. It has never occurred to us to 
deny the beauty of Christlike character. We have 
profound admiration for a genuine Christian. We 
flatter ourselves that we would very much delight in 
being true saints of God. But the task is quite too 
high. It is beyond our feeble strength. But if this 
is true, whose fault is it then that we are not Chris¬ 
tians ? It is not our own, but God’s. Therefore, if we 
are condemned for our failure we have not had a square 
deal. God is for us a hard master. He is not just. 

What a hideous scarecrow is this. How dangerous 
and how damning. There is no greater dishonor that 
we can do our Lord than to mistrust Him. Shall not 
the Judge of all the earth do right? He shall. He 
does. There is not a promise that He is not eager to 
keep with you. There is no spiritual treasure that He 
is not willing to put into your hands. Dare to ding 
yourself upon His mercy and you will find that He will 
not fail you. What greater calamity can come to any 
man thgn the calamity of suspecting, of mistrusting 
God ? Such a man slams every door in his own face. 
Believe it, God’s commands to you are capable of being 
carried out. He is infinitely just and fair. If you 
will test Him you will find Him true. 

The fourth scarecrow that frightened this poor fellow 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 99 

was the possibility of failure. He was afraid to fail. 
“Have you had any berries?” I ask one of these hungry 
birds perched outside the garden. And he answers, 
“Ho.” “Why not? Are there not berries just inside 
the palings yonder?” “Yes,” he answers sadly, “but 
I am afraid if I go I will not get any, or I am afraid 
if I did get a berry something would make me drop it 
before I could ever get out.” Foolish bird. And far 
more foolish men. Before you learned to box or to 
play tennis or to do anything else you had to risk fail¬ 
ing at it. Hot only so, but you failed at it at the be¬ 
ginning. To he so afraid of failing as to refuse to try 
is to make the supreme failure. What greater calamity 
is there than to be so afraid that you will fall that you 
never dare to stand on your feet. 

Tonight I invite you to become an earnest and active 
Christian. Hot only so, but through me Jesus Christ 
is inviting you. But you say, “I am afraid I could 
never hold out.” But could there be any greater failure 
than to refuse to try ? When did it ever come to pass 
that an honest effort made matters worse ? Suppose you 
were to make a sincere and earnest endeavor to be a 
Christian. Surely you do not think for a moment that 
you would fail any more completely than you are failing 
by making no effort at all. Certainly to refuse to try 
is the supreme failure. 

How look what calamity was wrought for this man 
by scarecrows. Look what his fears did for him. 
First, they kept him from doing anything. I met a 
huge dog one day. This dog sprang at me and I did 
the wisest thing possible. I stood still in my tracks 
and looked at him. But the reason that I did so was 
not because I knew that such conduct was wise. I did 
so because I was literally frozen with fear. My fears 


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had me petrified. So it was with this man. He was 
so afraid of doing the wrong thing that he did nothing. 

The second calamity that it worked for him was that 
it kept him from rendering any service. Other men 
toiled for their master and increased their store from 
two to four and from five to ten. But he never in¬ 
creased his in the slightest. He was no bigger at the 
hour of his death than he was at his birth hour. He 
never grew. He never helped. He never served in 
the slightest degree. He began, continued and ended 
utterly useless. 

The final tragedy of his life was that he lost every¬ 
thing. “Take the talent from him / 7 said the Master, 
“and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For 
unto every one that hath shall be given, . . . but from 
him that hath not shall be taken away even that which 
he hath . 77 The penalty for not using that which you 
have is to lose it. Darwin lost his taste for music 
and poetry by simply refusing to use them. Many a 
man has lost his brains in the same way, and far more 
have lost their faith and their spiritual capacity. 

Hot only did this man lose his moral wealth, not only 
did he lose his character, but losing that he of neces¬ 
sity lost his destiny. He was not commended by his 
master simply because he was not worthy of com¬ 
mendation. He did not miss the joy of his lord because 
his lord wanted him to miss it. He missed it because 
he refused to take it. 

But what is to be done with these scarecrows? We 
cannot deny their existence. Our fears are very real. 
There are some few people who are utterly blind to 
scarecrows. They never see them. The bulldog is a 
creature like that. He is scarecrow-blind. But most 
of us are creatures tormented by many fears. We never 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 101 


pass a garden without seeing a scarecrow. What shall 
we do with them ? 

First, make use of them. This very brilliant essay¬ 
ist says that if he were a bird he would make it his busi¬ 
ness to hunt for scarecrows. He would light on Church 
steeples and every high place he could find and look 
north, east, south and west for scarecrows. He would 
do this because a scarecrow is an indication of some¬ 
thing desirable. Any intelligent bird ought to know 
that no man ever sets up a scarecrow in an untilled 
garden. Nobody ever saw a scarecrow in a desert. A 
scarecrow is a summons to a feast. It is as musical as 
a dinner bell. It is a grotesquely engraved invitation 
to a banquet. 

So we are to use our scarecrows. The very fact that 
an enterprise is difficult is one indication, as a rule, of 
its desirability. If you want to drift, if you want to 
refuse to accept any kind of responsibility, that is easy 
enough. There are no forbidding specters to frighten 
you out of that path. But the minute you seek to 
count as you know you ought to count, there are hard¬ 
ships to be faced. To set yourself to be a Christian, 
for instance, is to face that terrifying scarecrow of 
self-denial. “If any man will come after me, let him 
deny himself .’ 7 And yet this is a guide post to life, for 
it is only as we lose our lives that we truly find them. 

Not only are we to use our scarecrows as guides to 
the most desirable gardens of life, but having accepted 
their guidance our next and final step is to defy them. 
It is useless for a scarecrow to tell that bird on yonder 
distant twig that it has strawberries at its feet unless 
the bird dares to face the horrid effigy and claim the 
berries. So you are to treat your scarecrows. You are 
afraid, of course. But do the thing you ought to do in 


102 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


spite of your fears. That is the highest type of courage. 

At the close of this service you are going to have 
an opportunity to declare your faith in and your alle¬ 
giance to Jesus Christ. It will tax your courage to 
the utmost. You may feel as if a thousand eyes are 
looking at you. It may seem as if the aisle down which 
you walk is almost a mile long. You will he afraid. 
But your very fears point toward the worthwhileness 
of the task. And if you will defy them you will gain 
a great victory and be only the stronger for the foes 
that you have had to overcome. 

To such as defy their fears there is a wonderful 
discovery. These two blackbirds sitting the one on the 
right arm and the other on the left of this scarecrow 
have this to say to us, that scarecrows are utterly harm¬ 
less things after all. They cannot hurt you in the 
least. They can only frighten you. And so it is with 
our worst fears. We are terribly afraid of ridicule, and 
yet ridicule could not hurt us. We dread criticism, but 
criticism could not kill. We dread death, but death is 
only a scarecrow. 

It is said that when the Arena was finished in Rome 
the Emperor with many of the nobles met to celebrate 
its completion and also to do honor to the architect who 
had planned it. The Emperor made a speech stating 
that they had come together to celebrate the great 
achievement and the genius that had planned it, and 
that they were going to do so by throwing certain Chris¬ 
tians to the lions. N"ow it so happened that the archi¬ 
tect had been converted to Christianity just a few days 
before. When he heard this the Arena swarmed with 
scarecrows, the scarecrows of scorn, of disgrace, of 
death. But this brave man heeded them not, but calmly 
rose and said, “I am a Christian.” And in less than 


SCARECROWS—THE MAN OF ONE TALENT 103 


five minutes he was tom to pieces. But he found 
that that grim scarecrow called “death” was only the 
guide to the eternal gardens of God. May you find 
victory tonight in the conquest of your fears. 


IX 


AN EASTER JOURNEY—CLEOPAS AND HIS 

COMPANION 

Luke 21/.: 18-31 

Hear the text: “Their eyes were opened and they 
knew Him.” Thus it stands written of one Cleopas and 
his companion. Who this companion was we do not 
know. How well educated these two were is also un¬ 
known. But of this we are sure: they were in posses¬ 
sion of the supreme knowledge. They knew Jesus 
Himself. Of course it is well to know about Jesus, 
but it counts for but little if we fail to really know Him. 
It is well to know theology, but that is a thoroughly 
dead and barren knowledge unless our eyes are open 
and we know Him. Botany is an exceedingly poor 
substitute for roses and violets. Astronomy can never 
take the place of the sun nor spill from its pages the 
pale light of stars. Just so no knowledge about Jesus 
is sufficient. We must come as did these two disciples 
of old to know Jesus Himself. 

Now look at their story. It is the world’s first glad 

Easter day. Jesus Christ has risen and has brought 

life and immortality to light. The tomb in Joseph’s 

garden is empty. Death has been conquered and Jesus 

is abroad in a springtime world. But there are those 

who have companied with Him and who love Him well 

who do not know this. Here we see two of them, 

Cleopas and his companion, as they take their way 

104 


AN EASTER JOURNEY 


105 


down the narrow streets of Jerusalem out the city gate 
toward the village of Emmaus. They have passed over 
this road in other days with fine hopes and high ex¬ 
pectations. But something has happened since then 
that has dashed all their hopes to the ground. They 
are now broken-hearted, and they have decided to go 
hack home. 

It is a great privilege to go home under certain con¬ 
ditions. No doubt some of the gladdest moments of 
our lives have been those moments when we turned 
our faces toward home. There are memories of home- 
goings in my own past that I can never forget. You 
have such memories today and they are unspeakably 
precious. You can never forget how the very car 
wheels seemed to sing “Home, Sweet Home ’ 7 as you 
joyously journeyed toward those that you loved. 

But there are other times when to go home is fraught 
with deepest pain. It was so in this case, for these two 
are going home from a new-made grave. They are 
going home after the funeral. They are walking that 
weary way that leads from the cemetery. What a 
familiar way it is. How many leaden feet have walked 
it. How many smarting eyes have bathed its dust 
with tears. 

It is a road that you have walked and I have walked, 
and though faith in God and the passing years have 
in some measure softened our grief, yet we cannot 
think of that journey still without a strange clutching 
at our hearts. We do not find it easy to go back to 
the old life without the cheering fellowship of one 
whom we had loved and lost. We keep toys with which 
no baby plays. And when we look at them they remind 
us of the one who is playing in the Nursery of Eternity. 
We keep a little worn shoe and sometimes we sob over 


106 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


it, not without a strange joy, because we are sure that 
the little foot that used to wear it now walks amidst 
the unfading gardens of God. 

These people, I say, were going home from a new- 
made grave, and for this reason they were sad. And 
for this reason, too, we look upon them today with a 
bit of sympathy and understanding because the road 
they walked is in some measure so familiar to us. 
We ourselves are in no sense strangers to its weary 
leaden miles. 

“There’s a magical isle up the River Time, 

Where the softest of airs are playing; 

There’s a cloudless sky and a tropical clime, 

And a song as sweet as a vesper chime, 

And the Junes with the roses are straying. 

“And the name of the isle is the Long Ago, 

And we bury our treasures there; 

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow; 

There are heaps of dust—but we loved them so! 

There are trinkets, and tresses of hair. 

“There are fragments of song that nobody sings, 

And a part of an infant’s prayer; 

There’s a lute unswept, and a harp without strings; 

There are broken vows, and pieces of rings, 

And the garments that She used to wear.” 

But these two disciples had not only lost one whom 
they loved, but they had also lost their Lord. They had 
lost the One from whom they expected redemption. 
They had lost the One who makes the funerals of our 
own loved ones bearable. In fact it is hard to under¬ 
stand how people endure the separations of this life 
unless they know something of the comfort and the 
hope that is held out to us through our risen Lord. 


AN EASTER JOURNEY 


107 


There is something unspeakably sad in the epitaph 
that America’s greatest laugher wrote upon the tomb 
of one he loved: 

“Warm summer sun, shine brightly here, 

Warm summer breeze, blow softly here, 

Green turf above, lie light, lie light. 

Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.” 

There seems in it so little hope of an awakening. How 
much better that gladsome song,— 

“Life, we have been long together 
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather. 

’Tis hard to part when friends are dear, 

Perhaps will cost a sigh, a tear, 

Then steal away, give little warning, 

Say not good-night, but in some brighter clime 
Bid me good morning.” 

So it is a weary road that these two disciples travel 
this Easter day. It is springtime, hut for them no 
flowers bloom and no birds sing. It is springtime, hut 
they walk under leaden skies, and their hearts are in 
the freezing grip of winter. It is only seven miles to 
Emmaus, hut what a long, long way it seems. Eor they 
are sad and they walk with lagging steps. And as they 
walk they talk tearfully of the glad days “that have 
dropped into the sunset.” “Don’t you remember,” said 
one to the other, “how He wept in the grief of Mary 
and Martha ? Do you remember how God-like He 
seemed when He called Lazarus from the dead ?” 

“Yes, yes,” came the answer, and it was mingled 
with a sob. “I was sure that it was He who should 
redeem Israel. I was perfectly confident that He was 
the Christ. I never dreamed that death could conquer 


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ITim just as it conquers other men. But alas and alas, 
they have crucified Him. So we must have misunder¬ 
stood Him. But it is so hard to realize that we were 
mistaken in thinking that He was to be the world’s 
Redeemer.” 

But when we look at them again they no longer 
walk alone. A winsome Stranger has joined them, and 
the three are now talking together. For be it said to 
the credit of these disciples that their conversation was 
of such a character that Jesus Himself could enter into 
it without embarrassment. All of our conversations 
are not pitched on so high a plane. “Jesus Himself 
drew near and went with them.” 

And, believe me, no lonely soul ever turns away from 
a new-made grave that Jesus is not there. But the 
tragedy of it is that we, just as these, so often fail to 
recognize Him. “Their eyes were holden that they 
should not know Him.” And there they went, and 
they thought He was in the tomb. They remembered 
the great stone that lay across the grave. They could 
still see the red Roman seal upon it. It represented to 
them the impassable barrier that separated them from 
Him whom they had loved. Beyond that barrier their 
ministering hands could not go. Beyond that barrier 
their voices could not penetrate. Yet all the while 
Jesus was near. Jesus was with them, talking to them, 
longing to be recognized. What a loss to the disciples 
themselves. What a grief to Jesus. I think one of the 
hardest things that our Lord has to bear at our hands 
is just this, that we so often fail to recognize Him. 

Why did they not know Him? The story says, 
“Their eyes were holden.” But what caused that? 
What lay back of the blinded eyes ? Just this: unbe¬ 
lief. They were not blind because Christ wanted them 


AN EASTER JOURNEY 


109 


to be. Their eyes were put out by their lack of faith. 
You are aware of the fact that doubt looks upon 
faith as dull-eyed and credulous. You are aware of the 
fact that doubt flatters itself that it is broad-browed 
and keen-eyed. But the truth of the matter is that 
doubt is blinding. Doubt dulls our vision. This is true 
in all departments of life. 

Faith looked at a drop of water once as it rose into 
steam. It saw in that little bit of vapor a prophecy of 
a power that would one day remake the world. Doubt 
saw only a passing vapor. Faith sees “earth crammed 
with Heaven and every common bush aflame with God/’ 
while doubt sits round and picks blackberries. Faith 
sees the horses and chariots of the Lord roundabout, 
while doubt sees nothing but encircling foes. There is 
nothing so bat-eyed as doubt. 

But to these doubt-blinded disciples Jesus comes. 
He came to them because in spite of the fact that they 
doubted, they yearned for Him. They wanted to be¬ 
lieve. They were hungry-hearted. And so He enters 
into conversation with them: “What communications 
are these that ye have one with another V 9 He did not 
ask that question for information. He asked it be¬ 
cause He wanted to hear the story from their lips. 
Christ knew their hearts, but He wanted to be told of 
their love and of their grief. He is just that much 
like ourselves, and we are just that much like Him. 
Then, too, they needed to tell Him. 

And so Cleopas began to tell Him. He told Him of 
the big hopes of yesterday. He told Him of the great 
dreams they had dreamed. He told Him of how win¬ 
some and of how mighty had been their young Prophet. 
And then in tones shaken with sobs he told Him of 
the awful happenings of last Friday. “Yes, we saw 


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Him nailed to the cross. We heard His wild cry, ‘Why 
hast thou forsaken me?’ We saw Him die. We saw 
Him laid in Joseph’s tomb. So of course everything 
is lost because a crucified Messiah can never save the 
world.” 

And you know what happened then? Jesus began 
to explain to them in all the scriptures the things con¬ 
cerning Himself. He opened up before their ignorant 
and doubt-blinded eyes the treasures of the Word of 
God. And mark you, He did not have a Hew Testa¬ 
ment. He only had the Old. But beginning with 
Moses and the prophets, He expounded unto them in 
all the scriptures the things concerning Himself.” 

Would it not have been wonderful to have heard the 
Inspirer of this Word explain it ? There are those 
today who are ready to throw aside the Old Testament. 
But Jesus found it full of teaching about Himself. I 
can hear Him as He tells them how Moses had 
said that “a prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto 
you like unto me.” He showed them how another had 
said, “Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted 
has lifted up his heel against me.” And He showed 
how this Messiah was to be sold. Then He came to 
that marvelous 53d chapter of Isaiah and expounded 
that to them: 

“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is 
the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up 
before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a 
dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness: and when 
we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should 
desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a 
man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid 
as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we 
esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, 


AN EASTER JOURNEY 


111 


and carried our sorrows: jet we did esteem him 
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was 
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for 
our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon 
him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like 
sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to 
his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the 
iniquity of us all.” 

And as He opened unto them the scriptures, the 
burnt-out fires of hope kindled upon the altars of their 
souls. They saw not only that it was possible for the 
Christ to suffer, but also that the fact of His suffering 
was the supreme proof of His Messiahship. They saw 
also that just as the fact of His suffering was foretold, 
so His resurrection was foretold. And the road lost its 
weariness. It became a radiant road, and all too soon 
they found themselves at the door of their humble little 
home. 

But the conversation has now become too fascinating 
to be broken into. They cannot let this winsome 
Stranger go. They fairly seize on to Him, saying, 
“Abide with us, for it is toward evening and the day 
is far spent.” They are intensely in earnest and Christ 
never fails to come in where He is wanted. These 
people were eager for Him. They clung to Him. And 
Jesus responded. He went in. Is there not something 
marvelously beautiful in the fact that this great Lord 
who has just conquered death is not too great to walk 
along the dusty highway with two disciples, one of 
whom is nameless? Is it not marvelously comforting 
that He is great enough to enter into the humble home 
of these lowly people to share their hospitality. “He 
went in to tarry with them.” That is what the story 
says. 


112 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

And when they sat at the table He Himself assumed 
the place of host. That is what He always promises to 
do—“If any man will open the door I will come in 
and sup with him, and he with me.” He took bread 
and gave thanks and broke it. “And their eyes were 
opened and they knew Him, and He vanished out of 
their sight.'” 

How, the big fact about this story, the important 
fact, is not how Jesus came to be known to these people. 
It is the fact that He really did become known to them. 
They came to know Jesus Himself, and that, I repeat, 
is the supreme knowledge. It is that without which all 
other knowledge comes to naught. They came to know 
Jesus as a living and risen and reigning Savior. 

And this is the blessed experience into which Christ 
wants to lead every one of us on this Easter Sunday. 
For we are not to think for a moment that it is His will 
that He shall be unrecognized. Do not believe that He 
has nothing more to offer us this morning than cold 
evidences of His resurrection. There are evidences. 
But we want more than these. My hunger is an evi¬ 
dence of bread, but I need more than mere evidence to 
satisfy that hunger. My parched tongue is an evidence 
of water. But before my real need is met I must kiss 
a spring on the lips. He is saying, “Son, thou art ever 
with me and all that I have is thine.” We may have 
the presence of Christ Himself as our comfort in our 
hours of sorrow. We may have Christ Himself as our 
defense in our hours of temptation. We may have 
Christ Himself as our antidote against fear in our 
hours of weakness and cowardice and failure. 

When I was a small boy my father and I were over¬ 
taken while in the field by a terrible rain. Such a 
downpour I have seldom ever seen. As we made our 


AN EASTER JOURNEY 


113 


way home we found very tiny branches swollen into 
big and mad streams. I walked behind. In one place 
I stepped into father’s track. The ground was soft and 
the water began to rise about me. I was afraid and 
cried for help. What I needed then was not evidences 
of my father. I had that. I was standing in his very 
tracks. I needed Father himself. I needed his strong 
arms about me and that is just what he gave. 

“They knew Him/’ and because they knew Him they 
forgot their sorrow. Because they knew Him they for¬ 
got their weariness. Because they knew Him they for¬ 
got that the day was far spent. “They rose the same 
hour and returned to Jerusalem.” And how different 
was the journey back to the city. They walked upon 
feet made nimble and swift by a great joy. When they 
reached Jerusalem they had “a sure word.” They did 
not indulge in speculations. They did not enter into 
long arguments in defense of their faith. They simply 
bore witness to a personal experience. They said, “Our 
eyes were opened and we knew Him.” May that 
blessed knowledge be the portion of every one of us at 
this glad Eastertide. 

If we know Jesus, in the first place, we know that 
we have a victorious Savior. Ho amount of the mere 
letter of the law can bring to us this knowledge. Ho 
man can call Jesus Lord but by the Holy Ghost. A 
skeptic said to a sad-faced man in London once, “Do 
you know Jesus?” And the man answered, “By the 
grace of God, I do.” And then the skeptic asked him 
certain historic questions, and the man could not an¬ 
swer them. And his questioner replied with a sneer, 
“You see you don’t know Jesus as well as you thought.” 
“Yes, I do,” replied the man. “I know that three years 
ago I was the worst drunkard in the East End of 


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London, and I know that today I am saved and kept 
by the power of God. I know Jesus.” 

If you know this risen Christ then the grave is no 
longer a blind alley for you. “It is a thoroughfare. 
It is no longer a terminus. It is a highway.” If 
Christ is to you a reality you no longer seek for the 
living among the dead, for you realize that the dead 
are alive forever more. 

If you know the risen Christ, in the third place, you 
not only look upon an open grave, but you look upon 
an open Heaven as well. These people watched Jesus 
ascend a little later, and they returned to Jerusalem 
from that separation with great joy, for they were per¬ 
fectly confident that the separation was only temporary. 
They were perfectly sure that He who had entered in 
through the gateway of cloud into the City Eternal had 
left the gate ajar, and that one day He was coming to 
receive them unto Himself that where He was, there 
they should be also. 

And this is your hope and mine this glad Easter 
day. Believe it, Heart, Heaven’s gate stands wide open 
for you and for me. Let us think gladly of it, for it 
may be our home. Let us think gladly of it, for it will 
bring us into the fellowship of those “we have loved 
long since and lost awhile.” Let us think gladly of it 
because there “we shall see Him face to face and tell 
the story saved by grace.” So my fondest hope for 
you and myself is this, that our eyes may be opened 
that we may know Him. 


X 


A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 

Genesis 25:31/.; Hebrews 12: 16 

In Genesis 25 : 34 we read these words: “And he did 
eat and drink and rose np and went his way: thus Esau 
despised his birthright.” No doubt you are well ac¬ 
quainted with Esau. You know him of that far distant 
yesterday. You also know him of today. There is 
much that is admirable about him. He has many 
qualities that we frankly admire. He is possessed of 
characteristics that tend to make him welcome in the 
society of our day and of any day. 

In the first place, Esau is a splendid animal. The 
tan of summer suns is upon his face. The strength and 
elasticity of many a mountain climb is in his limbs. 
He has the graceful and easy movements of the athlete. 
He is a fine, upstanding, husky fellow that makes a 
pleasing impression upon any crowd in which he 
chances to be. 

Then he is possessed of a charming physical courage > 
and daring. I do not think Esau would count for a. 
straw on a moral stand, but physically he was unafraid. 
He has that type of courage which we admire, but 
which the bulldog possesses along with ourselves. In # 
the chase he is ever the leader. In the places of danger 
he goes with a total unconsciousness of fear. He would 
have made an admirable man on the football team. He 

is rich in physical strength and courage. 

115 


116 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

In the next place he is generous and open-handed 
and open-hearted. He is quick to be angry and equally 
quick to make up. He would never stoop to do a mean 
and cowardly and ungenerous thing. He might despise 
his brother Jacob, but he would be too big to drive a 
sharp bargain with him as J acob drove with himself. 
He is a breezy Bohemian type of man. He has a way 
of putting all his goods in the show case and thus 
often winning an applause that is not his due. 

Now if you are a reader of modern fiction you have 
possibly been struck with the fondness of many of our 
present-day authors for the type of character that Esau 
represents. Hid you ever notice with what delight 
many of our fiction writers picture the virtues of some 
worldling against the background of the failures and 
vices of some church man ? It seems to be a most 
joyful pastime with a certain type of author. The 
name of such books is almost legion. Take “The Call¬ 
ing of Dan Matthews” for instance. The only three 
characters in there that the author would have us re¬ 
spect are an infidel doctor, a nurse who is a rank ma¬ 
terialist and a preacher who is an utter coward and 
who gives up his Christ and his vocation for the love 
of a woman. Now there are folks that are like these, 
but they are not the folks who keep up the moral stand¬ 
ards of the communities in which they live. Yet the 
author tries to make us believe that this is the case. 

Or take a later book. Take the work of that literary 
scavenger who took a stroll down “Main Street.” He 
is not without ability. But he is a self-appointed in¬ 
spector of street gutters and of sewers. He has an eye 
for the moral carrion of the community. Now whom 
does he seek to have us respect? Who are the ones 
that when sickness comes do the self-forgetful and the 


A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 


117 


self-sacrificing deeds of service? Not the people of 
faith. Not those who believe in Christ. 

No, there are just two characters in the hook that the 
author thinks are worthy of our admiration. There 
are only two who have fine, heroic qualities. One of 
them is a renegade Swede who is anchored to no place 
and who is mastered by no principles; a physical and 
a moral tramp. The other is a little bunch of feminine 
ignorance and conceit and ingratitude. She is the wife 
of the physician of the book. She is the one who plays 
the heroine when sickness comes to the Swede’s house. 
But she sees nothing heroic in the common duties of 
life. She has no appreciation of her social relation¬ 
ships. As a wife she is a travesty and as a mother 
she is a cynical joke. 

It is amazing why any intelligent author will show 
you beautiful effects when he paints behind these ef¬ 
fects base and ugly causes. It is easy for an author to 
leave the impression that those who do the charitable 
work of the world are the irreligious. It is easy to 
paint the unbeliever as charitable and broad-minded 
and kind and the believer as uncharitable and narrow 
and mean. But when we get into the realm of fact we 
know that the picture is utterly false. There are mean 
men in the church, we are ready to confess. But they 
are not mean because of their Christianity. They are 
mean for lack of it, and to take any other position is 
to be dishonest. And yet tens of thousands are taken in 
by this dishonesty. And so there are vast multitudes 
who are antagonistic to the Church of Christ today 
because they do not know for what it stands. 

N"ow while the type of character represented by this 
generous animal Esau may be made to look well in a 
piece of fiction, we must confess that he does not look 


118 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


well here in the sacred record. It is true that Jacob 
does not measure up either. His conduct is mean and 
despicable. But with all his faults he is far more 
hopeful than this breezy brother of his who sells his 
birthright for a mess of pottage. 

Look at the picture. Esau has returned from the 
hunt. In the excitement of the day he has forgotten in 
some measure his keen hunger. But now as he returns 
his animal appetite clamors for immediate satisfaction. 
As he comes to the tents of his people he is greeted by 
the savory odor of the pot of lentils that his brother 
Jacob is cooking. The fumes go to his brain like the 
fumes of liquor to the brain of a toper. Lie must have 
some of that food at once. So he lifts the flap of the 
tent and shouts to his keen and watchful brother: “Let 
me gulp down some of that red stuff.’ 7 

Jacob sees his chance. He knows that Esau does not 
set a great price upon his birthright. A man does not 
come to despise his birthright all at once. He has heard 
him speak of it jestingly, flippantly. He has heard him 
make flings at it as a thing of no great value. Eor 
this reason he believes that the time has come now that 
he may win his desire. 

“All right,” he replies to his hungry brother, “I will 
let you gulp down this red stuff. But first you must 
sell me your birthright.” Esau hesitates a moment, 
scowls, breathes in the fragrant odor of the cooking 
lentils and then with a snap of his finger says: “Take 
it. What’s the good of it anyway? Besides, I am 
about to die and what good will a birthright do me if 
I die of starvation ?” 

A moment later Esau is doing what he has requested 
to do. He is gulping down the hot beans that Jacob 
has sold him. He eats with rapidity and relish. At 


A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 


119 


last the large porringer is empty. Then Esau heaves a 
satisfied sigh, draws the sleeve of his goat-skin coat 
across his mouth, yawns, looks sleepily about him, rises 
and walks out of the tent and off the stage. “And he 
did eat and drink and rose up and went his way: thus 
Esau despised his birthright.” 

He ate and drank and went his way. That short 
sentence tells about all life meant to Esau. Almost 
his entire biography is written in that one brief sen¬ 
tence. And you cannot hut he struck with what a 
mean affair it was. Suppose you wanted to dramatize 
the life of Esau. It would be an exceedingly simple 
matter. You would need only two articles of furniture 
on the stage: a dish of lentils and a coffin. It would 
not take a genius to play the part of Esau. A trained 
monkey would he sufficient. In fact, even a pig might 
serve. So simple is the part that any animal that is 
able to eat and walk and die might take it. “And he 
did eat and drink and rose up and went his way.” 

This is Esau’s story and yet his grandfather was a 
man who was known as the friend of God. This is 
a story of one who had the same blood in his veins 
as that which flowed in the veins of Moses and of 
Paul. Yet how little life meant to him! IIow small 
was his achievement! I see him stumbling off the 
stage and I cannot but ask him a question. “Esau, you 
are going out into the night. You have lived your life. 
What have you accomplished ? What has it meant to 
you ? What has it meant to the world ?” 

When I ask Moses that question he can point to a 
nation that has been led from bondage to freedom. 
When I ask Paul he can point to nations that once sat 
in darkness that have come into the light. But when 
I ask Esau he can only point to an empty dish. And 


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lie says: “Do you see that empty dish ? When I began 
to do business in this world that dish was full of beans, 
steaming hot beans. It is empty now. That is what 
I have accomplished. That is what life has meant to 
me.” “And he sat down to eat and drink and rose up 
and went his way.” What an awful failure he was! 

How what is the secret of Esau’s failure? He did 
not fail because he was vicious. He did not fail be¬ 
cause he was mean and cruel. When we ask for the 
answer to this question we find it in the letter to the 
Hebrews. The writer of this letter lays two charges 
against Esau. One of them is that he was a forni¬ 
cator, or better translated, that he was a sensualist, a 
mere animal. The other charge against him is that he 
was profane. 

Take the first charge. Esau failed because he was 
sensual. N"ow we have come to use this word today 
with a restricted meaning. It refers to one form of 
vice. But as used here it has a wider meaning. It 
means that Esau lived his life in the realm of the 
sensual. He was a slave to the visible, to the tangible, 
to the physical. He had no sense or appreciation of 
the spiritual and of the unseen. He lived his life upon 
the same plane that he would have lived it if he had 
been nothing more than an intelligent animal. 

Being a sensualist Esau had no appreciation of his 
own manhood. There are people who offend us because 
of their self-satisfied conceit. There are people who 
make us laugh because of the exalted opinion they have 
of themselves. A gentleman came forward at the close 
of a service recently and informed me that he would 
certainly like to hear me preach if I knew what he 
knew- And I thought that I would certainly like to 
hear him if he only knew as much as he thought he 


A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 121 

knew. Pure unmitigated conceit is offensive and 
laughable. 

But, mark you, there is something far worse than 
conceit, and that is the despising of your own man¬ 
hood. Scientists have been looking for the missing 
link between man and the lower animals for many 
years. But as a matter of fact, the whole chain is 
missing. There is a chasm between you and the best 
chimpanzee alive that is infinitely wider than the spaces 
between the stars. When I turn to the Record I read: 
“When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, 
the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what 
is man that thou art mindful of him and the Son of 
man that thou visitest him ? Thou madest him a little 
lower than God and crownedest him with glory and 
honour.’ 7 When I read that I do not wonder that the 
world’s greatest genius has exclaimed: “What a piece 
of work is man ! How noble in reason; how infinite in 
faculty; in form and bearing how express and ad¬ 
mirable; in apprehension how like an angel; in com¬ 
prehension how like a God!” 

This is not denying that man is a sinner. This is 
not shutting our eyes to the fact that there is much in 
us that is mean and ngly. We know that man has 
sinned. That in itself is an indication of his possible 
greatness. The beast cannot sin. He has no will. He 
is not made in the image of God. He is incapable of 
choice. Man has this Godlike capacity. Therefore he 
can take the lower road. He can plunge into the abysm 
of night if he will. But he can also home among the 
stars. 

NTow a man may fail because of a shallow self-con¬ 
ceit. A man may fail from overestimating himself. 
But where one fails by so doing, I am persuaded that 


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scores fail from underestimating themselves. A con¬ 
tempt for yourself as a man is not the way to ascend 
unto the heights. There is some truth in Tennyson’s 
statement: “Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-con¬ 
trol; these three alone lead to sovereign power.” You 
may smile at the cynic who says: “I could believe in 
humanity if it were not for folks.” But you have got 
to believe in and appreciate your own humanity or you 
will sink into the hell of the sensualist. 

And if you find this hard, remember this, that Jesus 
Christ believed in humanity. As worthless as you seem 
to yourself sometimes, as worthless as the other man 
seems, there is something in the poorest of us that Jesus 
Christ thought of infinite value. Every man in His 
sight bore the image of Almighty God stamped upon 
him. But the sensualist has no appreciation of this. 
Therefore we are not surprised to hear the sensual Beau 
Brummell declare that the life of a dog is better than 
the life of a man. 

Esau, having no appreciation of his own manhood, 
was devoid of self-control. There was no special reason 
why he should control himself. “Ye are the temple of 
the living God. As God hath said, T will dwell in 
them and walk in them.’ ” Again we read, “Know ye 
not that ye are the temple of God, that the spirit of 
God dwelleth in you ?” A man that has this faith will 
realize the absolute necessity of a holy self-control and 
self-mastery. But without it we tend to yield to the 
inevitable outcome of sensuality. 

You remember Esau is spoken of as a profane person. 
That does not mean that Esau swore. It is possible that 
he did. But it means that Esau had no “holy place” 
in his life. Pro—in front of, and fane—the temple. 
His life was outside. It was unfenced. It had no 



A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 


123 


high wall of conviction about it. It was shut in by no 
iron grating of principle. Hence his soul became the 
galloping ground of any and every foul passion that 
desired to romp across it. 

Being a sensualist Esau had no appreciation of his 
own possibilities. It never occurred to him to dream 
great dreams of the larger man he might become. In 
fact he was not interested in tomorrow. He was only 
interested in today. As long as examination day was 
next week Esau would never bother. The sensualist 
will not allow the future to interfere with what he 
wants to do in the present. He mortgages his to¬ 
morrow to his today. 

“Esau, suppose you sell your birthright today, how 
about tomorrow? Hid it ever occur to you that you 
might regret it some time? Hid you ever stop to con¬ 
sider that you might one day be sorry ? If you are 
never sorry in the world that now is, are you not afraid 
that you will miss something in the life that is to 
come ?” And Esau is not interested in the least. If 
he is immortal he does not care to think about it. He 
says, “This present life is enough for me. I am willing 
to take the cash and let the credit go.” 

So he forgot that however poor a creature he was he 
was capable of being remade by the power of God. He 
forgot that he had the capacity for infinite growth and 
development. He ignored the fact that there were 
moral heights ahead of him that he might scale 
in the fellowship of the Most High. Being a sensualist 
he was not at all interested in the larger and finer and 
nobler character that he might achieve. Being a sen¬ 
sualist he was not concerned in the achieving of the 
Godlike character that God had made possible for him. 

Just as Esau was not interested in being, neither was 


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he interested in doing. He belonged to the family 
that had entered into a covenant relation with God. He 
belonged to the privileged. But he had no sense of 
obligation. There were no compelling convictions that 
urged him on to service. Esau never said, ‘T must do 
this” or “I must do that.” He simply said, “I will do 
as I please.” 

Esau had no appreciation of God nor of those eternal 
spiritual values that are represented by a truly re¬ 
ligious life. Hot that Esau hated religion. Hot that 
he had for a moment thought of fighting the Church or 
tearing the Bible into shreds. The position of Esau on 
matters spiritual was just this : he cared nothing about 
them whatever. He was simply not interested. They 
had no place in his scheme of things. There are multi¬ 
tudes like him today, people who have no more interest 
in the Lord Jesus Christ than if they were highly intel¬ 
ligent animals and no more. 

When I was a boy I had a dog to which I was 
greatly devoted. There were some things that we would 
enjoy together. If mother gave me a piece of bread I 
could share it with him and we could both enjoy it. If 
we were hunting we both found joy in chasing a rabbit 
or a squirrel. But there were places where our com¬ 
panionship stopped. When I memorized the Twenty- 
third Psalm he didn’t enter into it with me. When I 
undertook to pray he stood by with no interest what¬ 
soever. He did not growl nor bark nor bite on such 
occasions. He simply cared for none of these things. 
And on such a plane did Esau live his life. 

Esau sold his birthright then because he was content 
to be only an animal. And it is interesting to notice 
the price that he got for it. What did Jacob pay him? 
He paid him one good square meal. That is all. “And 


A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 


125 


he sat down and ate and drank and rose up and went 
his way.” And when you see how cheaply this man 
sold out you are ready to shout “Fool” at him across 
the wide spaces of the years. But before you do that, 
think of your own life and maybe you will not have to 
shout. Maybe you can just whisper the word into the 
ear of your own soul. Esau got a good square meal. 
How much better have you been paid ? 

Frankly, as I know myself and others, as I read his¬ 
tory, I am persuaded that Esau was as well paid as 
the average. He got as much for his birthright as Lord 
Byron did. I think he got quite as much solid enjoy¬ 
ment out of his bargain as did Mapoleon. He got as 
much real pleasure out of that meal as did the million¬ 
aire who dumped himself into the sea the other day. 
He had sold his birthright for a few millions of dollars. 
And I seriously doubt if he had found as much pleas¬ 
ure in his millions as Esau found in his lentils. 

But there came a time when Esau was dissatisfied 
with the trade that he had made. That comes in every 
life. Ho man can be satisfied with a sensual life, be¬ 
cause he is more than a mere animal. I find no indi¬ 
cation that the hogs among which the prodigal found 
himself were unhappy or disconsolate hogs. The pig¬ 
sty and the husks satisfied them quite well. As long 
as they were fed they were content. They neither wor¬ 
ried about yesterday nor today nor tomorrow. But 
while they grunted restfully, the pangs of hell got hold 
on the Prodigal. He could not forget that he was 
made for something better. He was tormented by un¬ 
satisfied hungers. He was tortured by unquenched 
thirsts. He could not brush the loving face of his 
father out of his mind. He could not banish the fel¬ 
lowships of home from his memory. He could far less 


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be at home there than an eagle could be at home in a 
cage of vultures. 

So there came a day when Esau was sorry. “After¬ 
ward when he would have inherited the promise he 
found no place for repentance.” Afterward—take that 
word in your hands and look at it. Read the story of 
his tragedy and of his tears. “Afterward.” Esau shut 
his eyes to an afterward. He forgot that he had a 
future. But every act has an afterward, every good 
act and every sinful act. Let us not forget that. 

“Afterward.” When you sin you seek to say to that 
sin: “Be gone! I am through with you.” But that 
sin turns and with a fiendish laughter says, “Yes, you 
would like to be through with me, but I am not through 
with you.” Judas betrayed his Lord, but there was an 
afterward. David wronged Bathsheba and murdered 
her husband, but there was an afterward. Esau sold 
his birthright, but there was an afterward. One day 
he saw the value of what he had thrown away. One 
day he realized the man that he once could have been, 
but now cannot be. Afterwards when he had thrown 
away his chance he realized its value and found no 
place for repentance, though he sought it diligently and 
with tears. 

ISTow this does not mean that Esau found no place 
for pardon. God will pardon us if we come to Him in 
the last minute of life. But there is one thing that 
even pardon cannot do. It cannot restore to us what 
our sin has thrown away. Eor instance, I talked this 
week to a poor, misguided mother who was dying from 
poison that she had taken with her own hands. She 
was sorry. She sought pardon at the Throne of Grace 
for the terrible sin she had committed. She had been 
a pitiful sufferer and I leave her with confidence in the 


A FINE ANIMAL—ESAU 


127 


hands of our merciful Savior. If we repent in our last 
moment God will save. 

But there are some things that even repentance can¬ 
not do. Repentance for this poor woman could not 
restore her to health. It could not take the poison 
out of her tortured body. It could not give her back 
to the husband whose heart she had broken and to her 
motherless children. 

To you who are living as Esau lived, not vicious, not 
cruel and full of hate, but only living for the things 
seen, you may repent of your bartered birthright some 
day. Should you repent at the last moment of life God 
would save you. What God could not do would be to 
put you where you were before you sinned, before you 
threw away your opportunity. Therefore the only wise 
thing to do is to repent now. Repent while you have 
something to give. Repent while the best years of your 
life are yet ahead of you. Give yourself now to the 
things that abide and are eternally worth while. For 
God can never restore to you the opportunities of this 
present moment. 

“The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on; 

Nor all your piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half 
a line; 

Nor all your tears wash out a single word of it.” 

“Therefore today if you will hear His voice harden 
not your hearts.” 


XI 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 

Luke 10:1^1 

“Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and troubled 
about many things,” This is a domestic scene. It is 
exceedingly easy to reconstruct it. Unexpected com¬ 
pany has come to the little home in Bethany. It is 
quite evident that these guests were unexpected from 
the simple fact that had Martha known that they were 
coming she would have prepared for them in advance. 
But they have come unannounced. One of them is ex¬ 
ceedingly important. He is a great favorite with the 
whole household. His presence demands that a worthy 
feast he set. 

This family that lived at Bethany is one of the 
famous and favorite families of the Bible. It is com¬ 
posed of three members : a brother, Lazarus, and two 
sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is evidently the 
elder sister, and since the death of her mother her 
competent hands have guided the affairs of the house 
with thorough-going ability. “Had Martha gone on a 
visit Lazarus would have been a bit uneasy. Had 
Mary gone he would have been quite lonely.” 

No sooner had Martha greeted her guests than she 
disappeared. You know where she has gone. She has 
hurried off into the kitchen. Immediately there is the 
clatter of pans and the noise and bustle of an eager 
and competent cook. Soon we catch the savory odor 

of various dishes that she is preparing for the coming 

128 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 


129 

meal. Now and then she hurries to the door to look 
out, as if she is expecting someone. 

From one of these errands I can imagine she turned 
quickly, for there is the odor of something burning. 
By this time she is thoroughly worried and out of 
patience. “Why in the world,” she mutters, “doesn’t 
Mary come ?” She will endure her neglect no longer. 
She hurries out of the kitchen into the parlor. There 
she sees her sister comfortably seated at the feet of 
Jesus and she is thoroughly out of patience with both 
of them, and proceeds to give expression to her dis¬ 
pleasure. 

“Master, dost thou not care that my sister has left 
me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help 
me.” It is easy to see that this older sister is thor¬ 
oughly exasperated. What her tone implies is about 
this: “Why should Mary sit still and talk while I do 
all the work ? I would like to he in here myself, hut 
it is necessary that somebody get dinner. I must take 
the lead in that, but it seems to me that the least that 
Mary could do would he to lend a hand. And I want 
you to send her on so that she can help.” 

Now it is impossible not to sympathize with Martha 
in some measure. We feel that her speech is quite 
natural and that her impatience is quite reasonable. 
But the rebuke that she expected Mary to receive was 
never given. Christ did not turn to Mary and say: 
“Mary, I am surprised at you. Go quickly and help 
Martha with the dinner.” Instead of rebuking Mary 
He rebuked Martha. Instead of sending Mary away 
He said: “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and 
troubled about many things. But one thing is needful 
and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not 
he taken away from her.” 


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Some have been greatly perplexed over this rebuke. 
Some have tried to soften it so it would not be a rebuke 
at all. But there is no mistaking the fact that Jesus 
is not pleased with Martha. No doubt He spoke to her 
in great tenderness. But He spoke also in great ear¬ 
nestness, for He saw that His friend Martha was in 
real danger. He saw that she had a genuine need of 
this tender and timely word of warning. 

Why did He rebuke Martha ? What was there in 
her conduct that was deserving of this reproof ? It was 
not that Martha was a wicked woman. She was not. 
She was a fine and true and noble woman in every re¬ 
spect. I doubt if there was a woman in her village who 
had more good deeds to her credit than did this busy 
and bustling woman Martha. 

Neither did Jesus rebuke her because of her lack of 
devotion to Himself. Martha loved Jesus. There is 
no mistaking that. She is the one who is reported as 
receiving Him into her house. Martha was in charge. 
If she had been a mind to she could have kept Jesus 
from coming at all. But though His presence made her 
unpopular, though His presence caused her house to be 
greatly criticized, yet for love’s sake she dared the 
criticism and hatred of the best people of her day in 
order to give herself the pleasure of entertaining Jesus. 
She was a lover of Jesus and Jesus loved her. When 
John tells their story he mentions His love for Martha 
even before His love for Mary. 

Nor did Jesus rebuke Martha because she was active 
and industrious. He did not rebuke her because she 
was a practical and earnest worker. Jesus was Him¬ 
self a thoroughly practical man. He did not come to 
establish in the world an impossible scheme of things. 
It is true that men have looked upon Jesus as imprac- 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 


131 


tical. They have classed Him among the beautiful 
dreamers. So the statesmen have done. They them¬ 
selves have gone on being practical till they have 
plunged the world into a veritable abysm of bloodshed 
and confusion, whereas if they had only followed the 
teaching of Jesus Christ there would have been long 
since a reign of brotherhood around the world. 

Jesus, therefore, is not against the practical and 
common sense. He knows that folks must have dinners. 
He knows that while people have souls they also have 
bodies. He is not a man of the cloister. He grew to 
manhood in a large family of not less than seven 
brothers and sisters, and he lived His life in the thick 
of things. He was an entirely practical worker. And 
the individual who is a dreamer of dreams and no more, 
receives no encouragement from Him. 

Why, then, does He rebuke this practical and active 
and industrious woman Martha. The reason becomes 
clear, I think, when we listen attentively to what He 
says to her: “Martha, Martha, thou art anxious and 
troubled about many things.” He is not rebuking her 
because she has to do with things. He is rather rebuk¬ 
ing her because she is becoming the slave of the things 
with which she has to do. She is being threatened with 
what another has aptly called “the tyranny of things.” 

Life has become far more complicated since Martha 
lived. What a complex civilization is this of your 
day and mine! If the tyranny of things was a danger 
in Martha’s day it is a far greater danger in the strenu¬ 
ous day in which we live. Slavery in the old sense has 
passed away, but how many slaves there are still! 
What countless thousands there are in the Church and 
out of the Church that are living today in the slavery 
of things. 


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What is the danger of this form of slavery ? A 
danger it is. That fact is evident from the evils it is 
already working in the life of this good woman Martha. 
Look what disaster it was bringing to her. She was so 
occupied with things that she did not have any time to 
sit at the feet of Jesus. She was so enslaved by things 
that she was not free to hear His voice and drink in 
His wisdom. She was so busy that she had no time for 
the cultivation of the divine friendship and of the 
divine fellowship. She was working for Him, I know, 
but it is possible to even do that and at the same time 
forget Him. “You may be engaged about holy tasks 
and lose the fellowship of the holy Lord.” 

There was never a time when that danger was greater 
than now. We are so busy. We are so hurried and 
harassed. We are so overworked. This is one of the 
dangers of the modern minister. He is tempted to 
squander himself in many different directions. He is 
in danger of becoming a slave to the very routine of 
his work. There is a persistent danger of his becom¬ 
ing a slave to the mere externals of his vocation. 

This danger dogs the steps of the business man. His 
business life is so strenuous that it tends to drink up 
his energy. On Sunday he is too tired to attend church 
and must find relaxation in bed, at tennis or on the 
golf links. Even if he attends church he is too 
preoccupied to receive any special spiritual enrich¬ 
ment. 

This is one of the perils of our young people, espe¬ 
cially here in Washington. There are a great many 
among us who are making really heroic efforts in order 
to obtain an education. They work during the day 
and go to school at night. Often we hear of a nervous 
breakdown. Where this physical collapse has not come 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 


133 


there is often a moral collapse. Life is too crowded. 
We are cumbered with much serving. We are robbed 
of our needed quiet hour for the cultivation of the 
divine fellowship. Such slavery also creates a demand 
for a relaxation correspondingly intense. 

Did you ever live on the farm ? If you have you 
know what happens when you let out of the stable a 
mule that has been pent up for quite a long time. He 
has a tendency to run wild. And there is that, espe¬ 
cially in an overworked young life, that makes that 
individual have a tendency also to run wild. If you 
ever get to the place where you feel as if you want to 
do something mean, that you are downright tired of 
being good and decent and respectable, that means that 
you are trying to rebel against your self-imposed 
slavery. Your soul is trying to get free from the 
bondage of things and it often seeks that freedom in 
the realm of license rather than of liberty. Martha 
allowed her slavery to things to rob her of the sense of 
the divine presence. It is possible for you and me to 
make the same tragic blunder. 

Thus brought into bondage to things Martha did not 
find peace and joy. She loved Jesus. She was a 
Christian, hut she was far from being a happy Chris¬ 
tian. Hear what Jesus said to her: “Thou art anxious 
and troubled about many things.” She was a thor¬ 
oughly worried woman. Her heart was brimful of 
anxiety. Her face was lined with care. “Thou art 
anxious and troubled about many things.” “Martha, 
let me congratulate you on having Christ as your 
guest.” But when I get a good look at her face I 
hesitate. There is far more of sadness and of anxiety 
pictured there than of joy and peace. 

Bondage to things always makes for worry. Your 


134 , MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


chances for happiness are exactly in proportion to the 
things you can get along without. You remember that 
marvelous palace in “Arabian Yights.” The owner 
was showing a friend over it, and that friend told him 
that all that he lacked was a roc’s egg to swing from 
the ceiling. The owner did not know where to find this 
treasure and so the palace lost all of its charm. There 
is ever something wanting to the man who is a slave to 
things. As his wealth increases, just so swiftly and 
far more do his desires increase. 

There is no doubt that Martha had a reputation for 
hospitality. She was proud of her reputation. But it 
is evident from the story that she did not so much pos¬ 
sess her reputation as her reputation possessed her. She 
became its slave. It drove her to utter weariness and 
exhaustion. It harassed her and worried her and made 
her fretful and unhappy. 

You have a position in society. You have a reputa¬ 
tion for always doing the right thing at the right time. 
There was a day when your wants were very simple. 
But as time has passed you have made what the world 
terms a success and now you have to give a great many 
entertainments. You have to go to parties that do not 
interest you. You have to make scores of calls in 
which there is very little friendship. You have to 
attend social functions that are a weariness to the flesh 
and that bore you to the point of desperation. You 
think you have a position in society, but your position 
in society has you. You are its bondslave. 

You have worked hard. You have succeeded. You 
congratulate yourself this morning that you own a good 
business. But in that I fear you are mistaken. In 
reality your business owns you. This summer I saw 
two flies walking along beside a ten-acre field—at least 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 


135 


it looked like that to them. It was a lovely piece of 
fly-paper. 

“What do you think of this new invention called 
Tanglefoot ?’ 7 said the younger to the older. “I am 
opposed to it,” was the instant reply. “How is that ?” 
asked the younger fly. “I thought you were broad¬ 
minded. Is it poisonous ?” “Ho,” replied the other. 

“Is it hitter?” “Ho,” came the reply again, “it is 
rather sweet.” “Then what is your objection?” Just 
then a neighbor of theirs flew and lit down right in the 
center of the paper. “My objection,” said the old fly, 
“is just this: you will never see our friend yonder in 
prayer meeting again. He thinks he owns the fly¬ 
paper, hut the fly-paper owns him.” 

Maybe you are the preacher. You also have your 
reputation to look out for. You must therefore be 
sparkling and up-to-date. You must also know all about 
the latest consensus of modern scholarship. You must 
he so absorbed in preaching fine sermons that you fail 
to live a fine life. You must he so careful to say nice 
things about Jesus that you haven’t time to get on inti¬ 
mate and living terms of fellowship with Jesus Him¬ 
self. 

Hot only was Martha worried. She was actually ill- 
tempered. She got angry. And when her anger was 
blown away a little she was doubtless humiliated and 
ashamed of it. This shame made her all the more 
angry and worried and wretched. Witji^hrist in her 
home she was a thoroughly dissatisfied and unhappy 
woman. 

If you are a bondslave to things you need not expect 
to find happiness. It does not come that way. “Give 
me health and a day,” said Emerson, “and I’ll make 
the pomp of emperors ridiculous.” And many have 


186 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

made this pomp ridiculous ©yen without the health. 
But no man has ever found happiness in things. Solo¬ 
mon had a lot of things, hut he was terribly short on 
happiness. The Kich Bool had a tremendous amount 
of things, but no joy. 

How much more the modern child has to make him 
happy than did the child of only a few years ago. What 
a vast variety of toys is put at his disposal. He has 
them of every conceivable kind and value. This is not 
true simply of the rich. And yet I doubt if the modern 
child gets any more out of his toy organs and pianos 
and baby victrolas than we used to get out of a whistle 
made of a goose quill. I seriously doubt whether he 
gets any more joy out of all his toys that are made of 
wood than we used to get out of a top that was made of 
half a spool. Things do not make happiness. Slavery 
to things simply kills happiness. 

Then Martha was not only worried and irritable and 
unhappy herself, but her influence in the household 
was bad. She cast the gloom of her worry and ill 
temper over others. She tried to entangle others in the 
same galling bondage from which she herself was suf¬ 
fering. Had she had her way she would have called 
her sister from the presence of Jesus Christ Himself. 
If I am a bondslave of things I tend to lead others 
into the same bondage. 

This tendency accounts for many a disaster. One 
man in a certain circle begins to live beyond his in¬ 
come. And oftentimes a foolish neighbor of his will 
follow his example. One girl puts on finery for 
which she cannot legitimately pay. And her friend is 
enticed into the same madness. One young man spends 
beyond his earnings and his friend mistakes his folly 
for wisdom and gets caught in the same net. Thus 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 


137 


bondage to things makes for our own slavery and for 
the slavery of others. 

I am told that in the steamboat days of the Mis¬ 
sissippi two steamers set out from New Orleans to 
Memphis. They belonged to rival companies, so they 
began to race. One of them carried a cargo of hams. 

It was discovered that a ham mixed with the coal now 
and then increased the heat and therefore the speed. 
This boat won the race, but it burned up its cargo on 
the way. 

That is a parable. How many there are today that 
are spending so much in an effort to live that they are 
failing to lay hold on life. What is life for ? It is 
given to us that we might lay hold on the pearl of great 
price. It is given us that we might attain the knowl¬ 
edge of God, Christlike character, high and holy service. 
But many of us are going to come to the end of the 
journey in the sad realization that we have burned up 
our cargo on the way. 

What is the cure for this slavery to things ? How 
shall we escape this galling tyranny? Mary shows us 
the way. How did she escape? There is nothing of 
the anxiety in her face that w T e find in the face of 
Martha. What is her secret ? Answer: She chose the 
good part. She chose the fellowship of Jesus Christ 
Himself. That high choice saves us from the dominion / 
and the slavery of things. As the sun puts out the stars, 
the rising of the Son of Righteousness in our hearts de¬ 
livers us from the dominion of all inferior gods. 

Having Him we have no fear of the loss of the things 
that we really need. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall 

___ M"** ' ■ ■ ' r'- 

not want.” That is a declaration of independence. 
That declares our independence, not of God, but our 
independence of things. It is said in firm faith that 







138 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


God will supply all our needs according to His riches 

\ in glory. I had an old friend some years ago who was 
a very poor man so far as this world’s goods are con¬ 
cerned. He had cultivated a crop of cotton on a piece 
of rented land. A terrible drouth came. He told me 
of going out into his cotton patch and seeing the blos¬ 
soms raining upon the ground. He said, “I am not 
going to make a thing on that cotton. But I stood there 
and praised God. I said, ‘Lord, I thought you were 
going to take care of me by means of this cotton, but 
it seems you are not. You have some other arrange¬ 
ments. I do not know what they are, but I know that 
you have made them. The Lord is my Shepherd, I 
shall not want.’ ” 

S A firm grip of Jesus Christ will also save us from 
the bondage of the lust of things that we cannot have. 
My God will supply all your needs, but beyond that He 
does not promise to go. He will teach us, as another 
has said, that it is better to desire what we have than 
to have what we desire. Some folks cannot enjoy look¬ 
ing at lovely things they are so eaten up with covetous¬ 
ness. How much freer is the sainted Bud Robinson. 
You remember the story of how he spent a day looking 
over the wonderful sights of New York only to return 
to his hotel at night to get down on his knees and say, 
“Lord, I just want to thank you that I haven’t seen a 
. single thing that I want.” 

v A man thus set free can really find enjoyment in 
things. He can do so because he is independent of 
them. Those who are slaves to things cannot find such 
joy. It is only as you make things your servants by 
the grace of God that you can find the highest joy in 
them. It is altogether possible that there was a far 
better dinner served in the Bethany home that day 


THE MODERN SLAVE—MARTHA 


139 


than would have been served if Martha had been like 
Mary. But this is also quite true: there would have 
been far more enjoyment of the simple meal that Mary 
served than there was of the elaborate spread at the 
hands of Martha. Did Martha enjoy her own dinner? 
Certainly not. She was too worried and angry and 
tired and ashamed of herself. Did Christ enjoy Mar¬ 
tha’s dinner? No. He saw that His presence was 
making for trouble and annoyance rather than for help¬ 
fulness and happiness and peace. He saw that He was 
in the way. Did Mary enjoy it ? No. Martha’s rebuke 
had no doubt made her feel ill at ease and embarrassed. 
So that however good the dinner was that Martha had 
prepared it was a very poor affair after all. 

So our Lord is calling us to simplicity. He is also 
calling us to freedom. “But one thing is needful.” 
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteous¬ 
ness and all these things shall he added unto you.” 
This does not mean that if you put God first you will 
get riclq hut it does mean that if you put God first you 
will get what life needs. It means that if you put 
God first you will he set free from the galling tyranny 
of things. “For if the Son of God shall make you 
free you shall be free indeed.” May the Lord help us 
to claim our birthright even as did this sainted woman 
Mary of the long ago. 


XII 


A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 

II Kings J+: 8 

“And it fell on a day that Elisha came to Shunem 
where there was a great woman.” I like this wonder¬ 
ful Word of God. It is so sincere. It is so absolutely 
reliable. It is so truly trustworthy. When it utters a 
rebuke you know it is a deserved rebuke. Likewise, 
when it compliments, you know that the compliment 
has been worthily given. It is no fulsome flatterer, 
this Holy Book. It speaks the straight, plain truth, 
like a loyal and sincere friend. 

Now there are a few individuals that give me con¬ 
siderable annoyance. One of them is the dill-pickle 
type. He prides himself on his power to find fault. 
Like Iago, the greatest devil of literature, he is noth¬ 
ing if not critical. He fixes his eye on the one wrong 
thing in your personal appearance, in your conversa¬ 
tion, in your domestic life, in your church life. He 
believes that a cocklebur is more pleasing than a rose 
petal, and that the most delightful of animals is the 
porcupine. 

Then there is that opposite type—the man who is 

always soft-soaping. He sows compliments broadcast 

as a farmer sows his grain. He is forever petting and 

coaxing and booing and cooing at you as if you were 

a baby. Now I like to be complimented. So do you. 

If you say you do not the only difference between you 

140 



A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 141 


and me is that I tell the truth. But there is such a 
thing as putting it too strong. I do not mind in the 
least folks saying lovely things about me when those 
things are not true. That happens often. But I do 
desire to feel that they are foolish enough to think them 
true. But you cannot feel that way about the persistent 
flatterer. He is just too sweet. I like bonbons, but I 
do not care to sop them in honey. 

One day I met this preacher Elisha and his assistant 
pastor. They were on a weary stretch of road wind¬ 
ing down towards Shunem. The sun was beginning to 
turn the western hills to gold. “Good evening, Brother 
Elisha. Come home, you and your assistant, and spend 
the night with me.” “No, thank you,” he replies, “I 
am going to spend the night at Shunem.” “Why,” I 
say, “isn’t that several miles down the road ?” “It is.” 
“Aren’t you tired?” “I am.” “Aren’t there any 
houses between here and there where you might find 
shelter ?” “Doubtless. Still,” he says, “I am going to 
Shunem. I am going for the simple reason that there 
is a great woman down there who gives me shelter, and 
who makes me feel at home.” 

Wherein is this woman great ?—for great she is. 
Do not forget that. God does not make mistakes when 
He writes the biographies of His characters, as men do. 
I turned over in some man-made history and read about 
a brilliant genius who utilized his great powers for the 
conquering and murdering of men. I read about one 
who turned half the world into a shamble. I read 
about a man who allowed his appetite to take him by 
the nape of his kingly neck and push his mouth down 
to the bung-hole of a. keg, and make him drink himself 
to death. And this historian said that the man who 
did that was Alexander the Great. 


142 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


The Bible would never blunder like that. It never 
confuses the real with the counterfeit. It never takes 
the tinsel for real gold. It calls this woman great be¬ 
cause great she really was. But why ? Wherein did 
her greatness lie ? Why was she singled out from all 
those who lived about her, and made immortal, while 
they dropped into utter oblivion ? 

It is not hinted that her greatness lay merely in her 
physical charm. It is fine to be beautiful. I think it is 
our duty to be just as charming and just as beautiful 
as we can possibly be. Even then there is a possibility 
that some of us would not be conspicuous. But some 
of the most beautiful women I have ever known have 
been thorough pygmies. Cleopatra was beautiful, but 
you could not call her great. 

Heither did this woman’s greatness consist of her 
high social position. The place of leadership in society 
is in the minds of some a very desirable something. 
Yet it is possible to attain such a position, and then be 
very far from great. Lady Hamilton was a social suc¬ 
cess, but she was a moral dwarf. In the eyes of her 
own circle she looked large; through the microscope of 
Calvary she was smaller than the motes that people 
the sunbeam. 

Hor was this woman called great because of her intel¬ 
lectual brilliancy. I am not accusing her of being 
stupid. My private opinion is that she was intellec¬ 
tually gifted. But greatness of intellect does not neces¬ 
sarily include greatness of soul. You may have a mind 
that flashes like a meteor, but its light may be only the 
baleful light of the star called Wormwood. This 
woman’s greatness was greatness of soul. It was moral 
greatness. We can read this fact in the story of her 
life purpose. 


A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 143 

What was that purpose? She was an ambitious 
woman. What was her ambition ? It was not merely 
to live in pleasure. She knew that the woman who 
liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. Her ambi¬ 
tion was not to make a career for herself in the great 
outside world. It is all right for some women to have 
such a career. I am not saying for a moment that God 
expects every woman to occupy the position of wife¬ 
hood and motherhood. All honor to those brave women 
who have wrought mightily and helpfully on the great 
world stage. But this woman’s ambition did not lead 
in that direction. Her life purpose was just this: to 
make a home. 

How you remember that she lived a long time ago. 
She lived long before the present-day emancipation of 
woman. In her day woman’s sphere was very circum¬ 
scribed. Today women may succeed in any vocation. 
But even bearing these facts in mind, we are convinced 
beyond a doubt that this great woman, dwelling in the 
little village of Shunem, chose the highest possible voca¬ 
tion that was open to women in her day, or in any other 
day. And I am persuaded, also, that with this old- 
fashioned faith most of you agree. 

This is true because the home is the place of supreme 
influence and supreme power. This nation of ours is 
of tremendous importance. It has come to us at a great 
price. We ought to honor it more than we do. We 
ought to respect its laws as we do not respect them. 
We ought to seek to keep our great flag stainless. But 
there is an institution more fundamental and more im¬ 
portant than the nation itself. 

The Church of God is tremendously important. So 
important is it that it was purchased by the precious 
blood of Christ. The task of the building of the church 


144 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


is big enough to occupy the energies of the eternal God. 
a I will build My church, and the gates of Hell shall 
not prevail against it.” It is to be the light of the world 
and the salt of the earth. Wherever the Church of God 
is weak, morality is weak. Wherever the Church of 
God loses her power, civilization rots down. 

But there is an institution among us that is even 
more fundamental than the Church. It is more funda¬ 
mental because it is the maker of the Church as it is 
the maker of the nation. That institution is the home. 
The home is the fountain from which flow the streams 
that make the great Mississippi of our national life and 
of our church life. As the streams are, so will be the 
great river. If we have today a growing number of 
lawless bootleggers among men, and liquor sippers and 
cigarette smokers among women, it is because we have 
raised them. And if tomorrow we are to have a Chris¬ 
tian nation, and if tomorrow we are to have a Christian 
Church, we must have Christian homes today. 

The home is, therefore, the most important institu¬ 
tion in the world. To be queen here is to be queen of 
the vastest empire in existence. To rule rightly here 
is to rule aright everywhere; and to fail here is to fail 
everywhere. Hence, this woman showed her greatness 
when she was able to pass by the secondary in order to 
give her heart and her all to the accomplishing of the 
primary. She showed her greatness when she made it 
her one purpose to be the greatest blessing that can 
come to any community or to any world, a real home¬ 
builder. 

Then this woman was great in her devotion to her 
task. There came a time when she was married. She 
did not do anything extra in marrying, but that is a 


A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 145 


very common occurrence. I have known other women 
who would be truly able to enter into sympathy with 
her. Her husband did not amount to so very much. 
But in spite of that she never faltered in her devotion. 
When opportunity came she was not to he turned aside. 
“Shall I speak for you to the king or to the captain of 
the hosts V’ said her great preacher friend one day. 
“No / 7 she replied, “I dwell among mine own people. 
I am sufficiently protected. I count it my highest duty 
as well as highest privilege to be the wife of a humble 
farmer, and to make for him a home . 77 

And notice, will you, how she made this home. Her 
first step in making a home was that she lived there. 
Her home was her dwelling place. That sounds trivial, 
utterly trite. Still you must realize that one of the 
greatest dangers of today is that folks have stopped liv¬ 
ing at home. Home is a sleeping place. It is a place 
where you slip in and dress. It is a place where you 
come to spill out your had temper that you have kept 
pent up during the day. But you do not dwell there. 
That is the reason it has ceased in a large measure to 
he home to you, and that is the further reason you have 
ceased to love home. 

“Home ain’t a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute; 
Afore it’s home there’s got t’ be a heap o’ livin’ in it; 
Within the walls there’s got t’ be some babies born, and then 
Right there ye’ve got t’ bring ’em up t’ women good, an 7 
men; 

And gradjerly as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn’t part 
With anything they ever used—they’ve grown into yer 
heart; 

The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they 
wore 

Ye hoard; an 7 if ye could ye’d keep the thumb-marks on 
the door. 


146 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

u Ye’ve got t’ weep t’ make it home, ye’ve got t’ sit and sigh, 
And watch beside a loved one’s bed, an’ know that Death 
is nigh; 

An’ in the stillness o’ the night t’ see Death’s angel come, 
An’ close the eyes o’ her that smiled, an’ leave her sweet 
voice dumb. 

Eer these are scenes that grip the heart, an’ when yer tears 
are dried. 

Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an’ sanctified; 

An’ tuggin’ at ye always are the pleasant memories 
O’ her that was an’ is no more—ye can’t escape from these. 

“Ye’ve got t’ sing an’ dance fer years, ye’ve got t’ romp an’ 
play, 

An’ learn t’ love the things ye have by usin’ ’em each day; 
Even the roses ’round the porch must blossom year by year 
Afore they ’come a part o’ ye suggestin’ someone dear 
Who used t’ love ’em long ago, an’ trained ’em jes’ t’ run 
The way they do, so’s they would get the early momin’ sun; 
Ye’ve got t’ love each brick an’ stone from cellar up t’ 
dome; 

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.” 

It is this heap o’ livin’ that makes home the best 
loved spot in all the world. “Home, Sweet Home” 
was not born of the memory of a clnb. “How dear to 
my heart are the scenes of my childhood,” was not in¬ 
spired by the memory of a palace in which we live for 
six weeks of the year. These songs and these loves 
spring out of the memory of an abiding place, a place 
where mother lived, and wrought, and loved. And, 
mark me, there is no home without this abiding. I 
used to see a little child play from house to house on 
the streets while her mother was away auto riding with 
a man who was not her husband. That child has a 
house to sleep in, but she has no home. 

Down in the heart of the hills of Tennessee stands 


A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 147 

an old-fashioned white house. There are sturdy apple 
trees still standing in front of it. They are great 
bouquets of color at this moment. The templed hills 
lift their tall heads above it. The forest of beech, 
oak, and chestnut stretches away in the distance back 
of it. The Buffalo River sings its sweet silver song 
just behind yon rim of trees. Little has changed since 
I was a child. But I do not go back there any more 
because the father and mother who made the home are 
not living there now. They are in God’s house. Home 
is a place where somebody lives; above all it is a place 
where mother lives. 

And this great woman was a devoted mother in heart 
long before she actually held her child in her arms. 
For years it looked as if the big dream of her life was 
never to be realized. For long she was childless. For 
long she waited for the little lad who did not come. 
But, denied the privilege of mothering her own child, 
she mothered the needy ones about her, because she had 
a mother-heart. Here was a tired preacher and his 
assistant, and she built a special room just for them. 
And what an artist she was at entertaining! To get 
down to her house was like getting home. It was like 
revelling in a day of bright sunshine after weeks of 
cloudy weather. It was like bursting into springtime 
after a long winter. It was like kissing a laughing 
spring on the lips after being choked by the sands of 
the desert. 

Such a privilege it was to be in this home that the 
preacher felt he must make some return. But this 
strange woman did not care to be spoken for to the king 
or to the captain of the hosts. Then what did she like, 
asked the Prophet, and the wise assistant whispered in 
his ear: “She has no child.” Ah, there was the sore 


148 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

spot. There was the wound that would not heal. There 
was the dream that had never materialized. There was 
the hope long deferred, that was making the heart sick. 
This woman yearned to be a mother. She wanted to 
feel the hugging of baby arms and the kiss of baby lips. 
She wanted to hear the music of baby prattle. And 
when the boon was promised, she felt that it was almost 
too good to be true. 

But the great day came. The sweet angel of suffer¬ 
ing visited the little home in Shunem and the most 
wonderful little laddie that ever lived was lying warm 
in her arms. He grew apace. One day he uttered a 
mysterious noise and she said he was calling “Daddy.” 
And when he began to toddle about the house getting 
into everything, pulling out every drawer, spilling 
everything on the floor that he could spill, when he 
began to ask questions, questions that no philosopher on 
the face of the earth could answer, she only loved him 
the more. 

1 

He is quite a big lad now. He is big enough to go 
to the field with Daddy. It is harvest time. The day 
is hot. The oriental sun shines with greatest intensity. 
Suddenly the lad puts his hand to his forehead and 
says: “Oh, my head, my head!” The lad is sick, very 
sick. And the father is very helpless. He does not 
know what to do. “Take him to his mother,” he says 
to one of his servants. Of course. That is where you 
always send those who are in trouble. That is where 
those who have aching heads and aching hearts almost 
always want to be sent. “Take him to his mother.” 
Where is there another pillow so soft as her breast'? 
Where is there a bed in all the world so comforting as 
her lap? Where is there such another physician as 


A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 14£ 

mother? Where is there such healing in a touch and 
healing in a kiss, surpassing all the remedies that 
science ever dreamed of? 

And what did this mother when the little lad came 
with his aching head? She said, “I am sorry, hut I 
am just preparing to go out. I will send the nurse in 
to look after him.” That is what one mother said not 
long ago. Her little daughter complained, and she 
said, “I have an engagement at a bridge party. I 
simply cannot fail to go.” And she turned the little 
girl over to the tender mercies of a servant. When she 
came home late that night the little sufferer, cold and 
ivory pale, lay on her bed asleep. She died, and she 
died alone. She died without her mother. And in the 
heart of that mother a poison dagger is buried, but no 
surgeon has skill to extract it. 

Hot so, this mother! Hot so, thank God, most 
mothers! We read the story so human and so touch¬ 
ing, and it tells that he sat on her knees until noon 
and then died. But he died in his mother’s arms. And 
where is there a place more fitting ? And where is there 
a place that so robs death of its sting? He sat on her 
knees until noon, and mother fought with death. She 
contested every inch of the battle-field. She never even 
took time to weep until the little fellow was gone. She 
was too busy trying to defend him from the darts of 
death. 

But even when he was dead she did not give him up. 
That is remarkable. Truly she was a great woman. 
She was great in her faith. Somehow she had become 
convinced that this lad of hers was God’s lad. He had 
come into her arms as a gift. She believed that her 
God was mighty to overcome all foes. She believed,, 



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even in that distant day, that with Him nothing was 
impossible. And so when hope was gone she kept on 
hoping. 

Look at the picture. The little sufferer in her arms 
no longer moves. The lips are still. The heart is still. 
The eyes are still. All is still. And yet there is no 
wild cry of despair. With resolute face she mounts 
to the Prophet’s room, lays the dead lad upon the 
Prophet’s bed, and hurries off to continue her fight for 
the salvation of her hoy. She does not send a servant 
to the Prophet. She goes in person, and with resolute 
faith that takes no denial she wins a victory. At the 
close of the day she is holding her little lad in her 
arms once more. 

Oh, this is a story for every mother, and for every 
father too. This mother fought with death. She did 
all that was in her power to keep her child from ever 
going into that land of gloom. She did her best to 
prevent it. That, after all, is the greatest work of a 
mother and the greatest work of a home. How many 
of us present this morning have never tasted moral 
death, not because of the goodness inherent in our¬ 
selves, God knows, hut because we have been prevented 
by the prayers of a saintly father and mother. They 
have defended us behind the protecting walls of a Chris¬ 
tian home. 

And then, how many who have gone into sin have 
been brought back by the unconquered faith and love 
and devotion of a holy mother! Oh, the last blockade 
by which a man or woman breaks on his w T ay to ruin is 
the blockade of a good mother’s love and a good mother’s 
prayers. When you are a bondslave in Sodom, when 
doom, final and eternal, seems little short of certain, 
then it is that tender memories, like delivering angels, 


A GREAT WOMAN—THE SHUNAMMITE 151 

lay their hands upon you and lead you out into the high 
uplands of abiding and saving faith. 

But, mark me, the mother who wins pays the price. 
There are women who seem to resent being women. 
They complain that the woman has the brunt to hear. 
That is true. “Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus 
His mother.” That attitude is typical. She is ever by 
the Cross. That is the reason that her sons and daugh¬ 
ters so often are crowned. The woman who refuses to 
pay, the woman who dodges the cross, also dodges the 
crown, both for herself and those whom she loves. 

The world has changed much since this great woman 
lived. Life has become far easier in a thousand ways. 
Travel is easier. Housekeeping is easier. Communi¬ 
cation is far easier. And labor-saving devices have 
been invented by the thousand. Yet with all this, we 
have found no easy way of mothering our children. 
We must still grope into the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death to bring them into life, and when they are here, 
for them we must daily die. That is what motherhood 
cost yesterday. That is what it cost my mother. That 
is what it will cost you. Thank God for the vast com¬ 
pany that do not shrink, but count it a privilege to pay 
the price. Here you are this morning in God’s house. 
A star of hope hangs in your sky. You are rejoicing 
in the fellowship of a present Savior, and you are 
looking forward to the good day when you shall find 
an eternal home and meet with those you have loved 
long since and lost awhile. 

This peace and these blessings are due mainly to your 
mother. She shunned not the cross. She bled in order 
that you might be blessed. Therefore you ought to 
appreciate her. If she is with you today you ought to 
give her a place in your heart. Her arm-chair ought 


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to have the warmest place by the fireside. You ought 
to he careful of her, for she has been careful of you. 
You ought to be patient with her, for she has been 
patient with you. You ought to mother her, for she 
has mothered you. You ought to, above all else, re¬ 
spond to the deepest longing of her heart—that is that 
you should be God’s man and God’s woman. Oh, I 
call every man and woman of us here present this 
morning to a new surrender and to a new loyalty to 
our Lord, not only for Christ’s sake, but for Mother’s 
sake. 


XIII 


SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT—DAVID 

I Samuel 30: 6 

“But David encouraged himself in the Lord his 
God.” Of all the benefactors that we meet in this world 
there are few that render so great a service as the cour¬ 
age bringer. There is no finer art than that of putting 
heart into people who have become despairful. There 
is no more splendid service that any of us can possibly 
render than that of relighting the candle of hope and 
expectancy in the darkened lives of those about us. 

So we are naturally profoundly interested in the hero 
of our text. We are interested in him because he is an 
encourager. He is a living antidote to fear. He brings 
that without which no man can live at his best or render 
his largest service. If you want to help where help is 
most needed, learn how to encourage people. If you 
want to make a contribution to life of high and gen¬ 
uine worth master the secret of changing sobs into 
songs. 

This is a vastly helpful and important service in the 
first place because a discouraged man is in large meas¬ 
ure a defeated and useless man. How many folks fail 
in the battle of life not for lack of ability, nor from 
lack of opportunity, nor even from lack of eagerness 
to succeed, but from lack of courage. That was why 
the man of one talent failed. He tried to blame his 

failure upon his master, but his master was not to 

153 


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blame, nor were bis circumstances, nor was bis ability. 
He bimself was to blame. He was too easily discour¬ 
aged. He was so soon mastered by fear. And fear and 
discouragement take the elasticity out of our step, kill 
our initiative and sap tbe tbews of our strength. 

If you are to succeed at any task you must work at it 
hopefully. That is true in tbe business world. That is 
equally true if your fight is with some physical disease. 
The man who is discouraged in the grip of a physical 
malady has far less chance to recover than the man who 
keeps up his courage and refuses to lose heart and hope. 
That is also true of your moral fight. If you expect to 
win in the battle for Christlike character, if you expect 
to lay hold on the crown of real manhood and woman¬ 
hood, you must not lose heart. You must not allow 
yourself to become discouraged, for to lose courage is 
to lose the battle. 

Then the work of the encourager is an important 
work in the second place because discouragement is one 
of the greatest sources of human wretchedness. How 
many unhappy people there are! Some of you listen¬ 
ing to me are restless and wretched and miserable. 
Why? Because you are discouraged. And a discour¬ 
aged heart is a joyless heart. If you are discouraged 
this morning, there is little brightness in the sunshine 
for you and there is little beauty in the springtime and 
there is little of perfume in the flowers and little of 
music in the song of birds. A genuine case of discour¬ 
agement is enough to blind us to a million treasures of 
beauty. It is enough to make us miserable in spite of 
all the laughter and glad possibilities of a God-ordered 
world. 

Hot only does discouragement make us wretched, not 
only does it rob us of the joy of the Lord which should 


SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT—DAVID 


155 


be our strength, but at times it causes us to throw 
away life altogether. I looked into the face of a suicide 
some months ago. It was a pathetic face, and as I 
looked at it and thought of my own joy in the privilege 
of living I could not but say, “Why did you throw 
away the fine treasure of life V’ And the answer that 
came back from those dumb lips and from that tired, 
hopeless face was this, “I lost heart. I became utterly 
discouraged .’ 7 And when a man is thoroughly dis¬ 
couraged life is no longer a blessing. He may not fling 
it away, but the joy is gone out of it. 

The encourager therefore is a man that keeps the 
song in life and that prevents life from becoming at 
once burdensome and useless. For this reason we are 
profoundly interested in David. He puts heart into us. 
He make us look up and laugh and sing. He makes us 
believe in the dawn of tomorrow. He helps us to forget 
our failures and our defeats, to fling away our fears 
and to lay hold upon hope and the high expectation 
of victory. 

And yet the text does not say he encouraged others, 
though that is true. What the text says of him is this: 
“He encouraged himself.” And that, I think, is the 
biggest thing you could say about him because that is 
absolutely essential to real encouragement of others. 
It is next to impossible for me to give to my brother a 
courage that I do not possess myself. It is very hard 
indeed for me to allay his fear when my own knees are 
smiting together. It is hard for me to convince him 
of victory when I myself am a slave to the fear of 
defeat. It is hard for me to inspire him with the 
hope of a glad reunion in God’s House if my own eyes 
are turned only to the dust that sleeps in the grave¬ 
yard. 


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He encouraged himself. That is a fine art which is 
indeed worth learning. It is a great privilege to be 
encouraged by another. It is wonderful to have a 
friend who is able to put hope into you when you are 
hopeless. But sometimes such a friend is wanting. 
Sometimes we seem to be forgotten. Sometimes we 
seem left absolutely to ourselves. The truth of the 
matter is that the great battles, the battles in which 
we lose or win our souls, are fought alone. Happy is 
the man who has become in some large measure inde¬ 
pendent of others and who can encourage himself. 
David was such a man. There was no friend to en¬ 
courage him, and so he encouraged himself. 

How did he do it ? That is a vastly important ques¬ 
tion. How did this discouraged and endangered man 
learn the blessed secret of self-encouragement? He 
encouraged himself. How ? He did not do it in the 
first place by denying or ignoring the difficult situation 
in which he found himself. There were dangers and 
perplexities and sorrows confronting him that were 
very real. He could not truthfully deny their exist¬ 
ence. He could not stultify his own intelligence. He 
could not spit in the face of his own reason. He could 
not so throw dust in the eyes of common sense as to 
deny the reality of the perils and sorrows in which he 
found himself. 

How, I know that we can sometimes help ourselves 
by looking upon the bright side. Some people seem 
to seek to see only what is disappointing and discour¬ 
aging. They have a keen eye only for what makes for 
despair. They have an ear that is attentive only to the 
discords of life. They forget to rejoice in life’s com¬ 
mon mercies and every-day blessings. But I have more 
hope for this kind of man than for one who shuts his 


SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT—DAVID 


157 


eyes to plain palpable facts simply because they are 
unpleasant. 

Neither did David encourage himself by the thought 
of his own goodness and greatness. He did not en¬ 
courage himself by patting himself on the hack and 
telling himself what a splendid fellow he was, how 
resourceful, how righteous, how saintly. The con¬ 
sciousness that we are right with God, that we have 
walked in our integrity, is a real consolation. But few 
of us have sufficient of goodness to he of any great con¬ 
solation to ourselves in our hours of depression and dis¬ 
appointment and discouragement. 

Neither did David encourage himself with the pros¬ 
pect of throwing down his task and running away. 
Many of us try to encourage ourselves in that way. We 
have undertaken to do a hit of work. It has not suc¬ 
ceeded as we expected. What do we do about it? In¬ 
stead of making up our minds to put more of energy 
and effort into it, we make up our minds to quit. We 
have set ourselves to the high task of being Christians. 
We stumble and fall. What do we then do? We hide 
ourselves away in the crowd. We cease to strive. We 
leave off the struggle. We give it up. We leave our 
church membership a thousand miles away from us and 
keep it a profound secret among our friends that we 
ever belonged to the Church at all. To encourage your¬ 
self with the promise of quitting is the encouragement 
of a coward and cannot hut result in the end in utter 
discouragement. 

He encouraged himself. How? Here is the secret: 
“David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” He 
brought his difficulties, his sorrows, his failures, his 
perplexities, into the light of the divine countenance. 
He laid his hand in the hand of Him of whom it is 


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written, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged.” He 
moved into the nearer presence of Him who is the one 
abiding source of courage. He was the one sure help 
for David. He is the one sure help for ourselves. 
“And now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in 
thee.” 

And will you notice the circumstances in the midst 
of which this man encouraged himself ? It is easy 
enough to encourage ourselves when there is nothing 
wrong. You are ready to say, “Of course David could 
encourage himself. He was a great man, a great poet, 
a great soldier. Everything was coming his way. He 
knew nothing of sorrows like mine and of struggles like 
mine and of disappointments and discouragements like 
mine. It is easy enough for a man to encourage him¬ 
self as he lies upon the velvet cushions on board a 
summer yacht, but it is altogether different when he is 
clinging to the splintered masts of a wrecking ship and 
the storm is on and death is laughing with mocking 
laughter amidst the torn shreds of the rigging.” 

But David was not in an easy place. He was face 
to face with a great failure. The city that he was to 
defend had been raided and captured and destroyed. 
He had failed at his task and failure was hard for him 
to bear just as it is hard for you and me. Yet in the 
midst of failure he encouraged himself in the Lord his 
God. And because he brought his failure and defeat 
into the light of the divine presence, he did not believe 
even failure was fatal. He came to believe that victorv 

e> 

might come out of defeat. And so he encouraged him¬ 
self in the Lord his God. 

Maybe you have failed, and this morning you are 
depressed and out of heart. You have been defeated 
and you have come out to God’s house with your mind 


SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT—DAVID 


159 


about made up that you will never try again. Ob, be¬ 
lieve me, Jesus Christ has abundance of hope for those 
who have failed. He promises that though the cup has 
been marred in the making, He will make it again. 
When His own disciples had failed Him so miserably 
and had slept when they should have watched, when 
they had slept when they should have prayed, when 
they had thrown away their big opportunity in the 
garden—He did not throw them away. But instead, 
He said, “Arise, let us be going.” And they arose and 
encouraged themselves in the Lord their God and went 
from failure to success and from defeat to victory. 
And so may you go, for whatever yesterday may have 
been, you may start anew this morning. 

“Each day is a new beginning, 

Each morn is the world made new; 

Oh, you who are weary of sinning, 

Here’s a hope and a chance for you.” 

Not only was David facing defeat, but he was facing 
hatred and unpopularity and loneliness and lack of 
appreciation that had come as a result of his failure. 
There had been a time when David was in high favor. 
Yesterday men applauded him. Yesterday their lips 
were full of compliments and they were ready to throw 
bouquets at him. Today he is the most unpopular man 
in the camp. Nobody seems to love him. Nobody 
seems to believe in him. Nobody seems to think that 
he is of any account at all. 

Now, there are some things harder to bear than that, 
I suppose, but there are very few. Some of you to 
whom I am speaking know what it means. For months 
you have been a stranger in a great city. You have 
felt yourself utterly alone, forgotten, neglected. Maybe 


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yon are bleeding from a wound that you cannot reveal 
to any human eye. Maybe you are neglected and 
scorned by those who should love you best. Maybe you 
have got lost in the big crowd and feel that nobody 
cares whether you go or come, live or die. 

What are you going to do about it ? Lock yourself 
in with your sorrow and let it poison for you every 
fountain of life? Would it not be wiser to take 
David’s course and if men fail to encourage you, en¬ 
courage yourself in the Lord your God? Would it not 
be wiser to remember that earth has no sorrow that 
Jesus Christ cannot heal and cannot sweeten? Do you 
remember those pathetic words of our Lord ? He had 
become vastly unpopular. Men hated Him. The great 
crowd deserted Him. Only His disciples clung to Him, 
and then one day near the end of the journey He said 
to them, “It shall come to pass that you will scatter, 
every one to his own and leave me alone.” 

How did Jesus come to say this? He would never 
have said it if He had not dreaded being alone. He 
hated loneliness. He hated it with a sensitiveness to 
which we are strangers. But He faced that loneliness 
without flinching and without fear. Why? “He en¬ 
couraged himself in the Lord His God.” Listen to 
what He says, “Ye shall leave me alone. And yet I am 
not alone; the Father is with me.” And there may 
always be that consolation for ourselves. Whatever 
hatred and misunderstanding and unpopularity may 
come to us, we can find encouragement in the Lord our 
God. 

Then not only had David become unpopular because 
of his failure, but he had come face to face with per¬ 
sonal danger. Death was rattling the latch of his door. 
The people out yonder who had once idolized him were 


SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT—DAVID 


161 


threatening to stone him. He was in the midst of peril. 
He was in a situation where most men’s faces would 
have been blanched with fear. What did he do when 
he stood eye to eye with danger ? He encouraged him¬ 
self in the Lord his God. 

And thank God, that sure refuge is open to every 
one of us. Countless multitudes of God’s saints have 
so encouraged themselves in the presence of danger and 
faced it calm and unafraid. David Livingstone tells us 
how one night sleeping in Africa he heard the wild 
screams of the savages as they sought him. The in¬ 
stinct of self-preservation seized him and he rose and 
broke into a wild run into the dark. But he had 
run only a few steps when he was arrested by a blessed 
promise from God’s Word. And he tells us that he 
went hack and lay down knowing that it was the word 
of a perfect Gentleman. He encouraged himself in the 
Lord his God. 

Yonder stands a man on board a merchant vessel 
in the Mediterranean. For fourteen days that ship has 
been the plaything of the tempest. It has borne up as 
long as it can and now it is going to pieces, for the 
storm still rages and its fury is unspent and unwearied. 
About this man is a ghastly crew, fear-blanched and 
hunger-pinched. They have eaten nothing for many 
days. This strange man lays hold upon a broken mast 
of that wrecking vessel and lifts his voice in a glad 
shout of encouragement. He cries, “Be of good cheer.” 
What is the secret of his cheer? Listen: “There stood 
by me this night the angel of God whose I am and 
whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul.” In the midst 
of this awful peril this saintly Jew had been encourag¬ 
ing himself in the Lord his God. 

Are you confronted this morning by dangers in whose 


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presence you feel utterly powerless and hopeless ? Are 
you afraid and panic-stricken in the presence of the 
demands that are made upon you ? There is a source 
of encouragement that is absolutely sure and unfailing. 
You may encourage yourself in the Lord your God. 
That was the secret of the strength of Stephen as he 
faced the stones. That was the secret of the joyous 
confidence of the early Apostles in the presence of the 
threats of their enraged enemies. They encouraged 
themselves in the Lord their God. And as they went 
forth in the power of that encouragement men saw their 
boldness and took knowledge of them that they had 
been with Jesus. 

David was also face to face with personal loss. His 
own loved ones had been in this destroyed city and now 
they were gone. It seemed that he would never see 
them again. There were children missing that he loved 
even as you love your own. And what did this great 
man do in the presence of the grim fact of loss and of 
separation from those that were dear to him? “He 
encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” 

There are many here this morning who have suffered 
loss. While I am speaking, your thoughts turn to 
widely scattered graves. Some of them are pathetically 
new and some are older and have grown green under the 
kiss of the springtime. But we have not forgotten and 
we can never forget. What will we do in the presence 
of the grim fact of death? Your little baby toddled 
right out of your arms and right out of your house one 
sad day. You have a high chair in which nobody sits 
and toys with which nobody plays. What will you do 
about it ? Ah, you may do this, if you will—you may 
encourage yourself in the Lord your God. David did 
that on this occasion. He did it again years later at 


SELF-ENCOURAGEMENT—DAVID 163 

the death of his little boy. He declared with a faith 
not even surpassed in the glorious noon-tide of the New 
Testament, “I can go to him, but he cannot return to 
me.” Oh, grief-stricken heart, encourage yourself this 
morning in the Lord your God. Let these words drop 
afresh like healing balm into your wounded soul. 

“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God believe 
also in me. 

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not 
so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there 
ye may be also.” 

This is our consolation and our hope. It is a hope 
steadfast and sure. And as the clods cover the faces of 
those we love we will not be afraid. We will en¬ 
courage ourselves in the Lord our God, knowing that 
His Word is sure, that one day we shall find those that 
we “have loved long since and lost awhile.” 

This then is the message that I wish to bring to you 
this morning, that in whatever circumstances you may 
find yourself, all that is needed for your encourage¬ 
ment is here. I know we feel many times like the big 
need is for us to get away. Our big longing is. to give 
up the fight and throw down the burden and hide our¬ 
selves from the discouragement and the bitterness of it 
all. But let me repeat, all that you need is here, for 
God is here and you may find an unfailing source of 

joy and encouragement in Him. 

You remember how this poet king felt at another 
time. A great sorrow was upon him and he longed 
for dove’s wings that he might find consolation in flight. 
But consolation, as he himself learned, does not come 


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that way. If we find it at all, the consolation that 
abides, the encouragement that never wanes into dis¬ 
couragement, we must find it in Jesus Christ our 
Lord, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He will 
sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous to he 
moved.” May this my text be true of you today. “He 
encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” 


XIV 

A MURDERER’S PRAYER—DAVID 

Psalms 51 


\ 


“Have mercy upon me, O God.” This prayer comes 
from the lips of a man whose hands are hideous with 
filth and whose garments are streaked with murder. 
David, the man after God’s own heart, has lost God. 
He has committed crime. He has committed a double 
crime. He has wrecked the home of a faithful and a 
loyal soldier. He has not only wrecked his home, but 
he has taken his life as well. How this sin of adultery 
sprang upon David like a wild beast, we know. How it 
led him on to the yet greater sin of murder, that we 
also know. 

When did this great fall come to David ? When was 
it that this man after God’s own heart lost his grip of 
his Lord. When was it that he forsook the Good 
Shepherd ? When was it that he became guilty first of 
the evil thought, the unholy desire, then adultery, then 
murder? David did not fall in the days of his ad¬ 
versity. He did not fall in the stress and strain of 
conflict. He did not fall when he was winning his 
crown. He fell after he had won it. 

How days of conflict are not without danger, but you 
will agree with me that they are not our most dangerous 
days. The young fellow who is having a hard time 
trying to establish himself in business or in his pro¬ 
fession, he is not the one who is subjected to the most 

165 


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savage temptations. He is not the one for whom we 
are most afraid. The days of our danger are the days 
when we have arrived. For one that can stand success 
and keep sweet and pure and Christlike, there are a 
hundred that can stand failure. David had succeeded. 

In the second place, David was idle. His had been 
a busy life. There had been much fighting in it. There 
had been much of stir and of movement. He had found 
it necessary to hide in the caves and in the mountains. 
As he had hidden there even in those busy moments he 
had sung songs that will outlast the centuries. He 
interwove the snarls and the growls of the mountain 
lions in his marvelous poetry as he said, “The young 
lions do lack and suffer hunger, hut they that seek the 
Lord shall not want any good.” 

But today he is idle. Today he has nothing to do. 

And no man can stand the strain of idleness for anv 

«/ 

long time. That time-worn saying that “the idle brain 
is the deviTs work shop” is everlastingly true. When 
is it that most of our young people go wrong? It is 
not in the hours of the rush of business. It is in the 
hours of leisure. It is in the hours when there is noth¬ 
ing to do. Nature abhors a vacuum, and unless we 
overcome evil with good we are going to overcome good 
with evil. 

Then David had reached that trying period of middle 
life. Youth has its dangers that are very genuine. Old 
age also has its dangers. But more people go wrong 
and more people fail morally between the ages of forty 
and fifty, I think, than in any other decade. It is an 
age when we have lost something of the fine idealism 
of our early years. We have stopped giving any at¬ 
tention to the pansies, as one has said, and are devoting 
all our time to the potatoes. We have not yet come 


A MURDERER’S PRAYER—DAVID 


167 


within the gleam of the lights of home. We are too 
far from spring to have our ideals. We are too far 
from rest of eventide to be solemnized by the thoughts 
of the homegoing. We need prayer and watchfulness 
at all times. But we need now especially to pray this 
prayer: “Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the 
years.” The most marvelous story in the Book of Acts 
is the one that closes with this victorious sentence: 
“For the man was above forty years old upon whom 
this miracle of healing showed.” 

It was, then, this successful and victorious and pros¬ 
perous and idle middle-aged king who fell. His temp¬ 
tation was first only a forbidden look, only an evil 
thought. But the thought grew into an act, and the 
King found himself that most dastardly of scoundrels, 
a home-wrecker. But there might have been the 
least extenuating bit of circumstance about-this terrible 
crime. It was committed in the heat of passion. But 
the crime that followed, the murder of the loyal and 
faithful man whom he had so deeply wronged, that 
crime was committed deliberately and in cold blood. I 
know of no murder in history that surpasses it for 
blackness. 

Of course David never dreamed that his sin would 
go that far. Only an evil thought at one end, but 
murder at the other. When the devil gets us on his 
toboggan slide there is no telling where we are going 
to stop. Clarence V. T. Richardson began in his early 
ministry with innocent flirtations with girls of his con¬ 
gregation. He ended with the murder of a girl he had 
wronged, and a seat in the electric chair. Sin has 
tremendous growing power. 

But strange as it may seem, this kingly man, once 
close to God, has become a murderer, a murderer with- 


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out one single extenuating circumstance. If there was 
ever a crime for which there was no slightest excuse it 
is his crime. And yet, wonder of all wonders and 
miracle of all miracles, this man David found his way 
hack into the divine favor, and has succeeded, by the 
grace of God, in being a great blessing to the world. 

What is the secret ? If I learn the way that he took 
to get from the Far Country into his Father’s House, 
maybe my sinful feet might walk it. For of this I am 
sure, that David stands in no greater need of forgive¬ 
ness than I do. He is no more needy than you. How 
did David find God ? 

The first step in David’s salvation was that God in 
His mercy sent him a preacher. Account for it how 
you may, it has pleased God by the foolishness of 
preaching to save them that believe. This preacher 
took his life in his hands when he went to call on David 
that day. A lion-hearted preacher was Nathan, and he 
was skillful as he was brave. He told David a very 
stirring story of the injustice of one man against an¬ 
other. He told of how a man with great herds stole the 
one lamb of the poor man. And David clenched his 
fists and hit his lips and said, “The man that did that 
thing shall surely die.” 

Oh, it is so much easier to get us to rage against the 
other man’s sin than to be indignant against our own. 
David listened to this sermon and never took a word of 
it to himself. He said, “This man Nathan is certainly 
digging up that scoundrel that has been sheep stealing, 
whoever he is.” And then Nathan did a tremendously 
courageous thing. He put his finger into the face of 
this lust-smeared and blood-stained king and said, 
“Thou art the man.” 

Then what happened ? Many a man in David’s posi- 


A MURDERER’S PRAYER—DAVID 


169 


tion would have killed the preacher. That is what 
Herod did. But David’s cheeks went white and his 
knees went weak and he fell on his face and sobbed out 
his prayer. It was a prayer that was altogether be¬ 
coming the lips of one who had sinned as he had sinned. 
It was just the prayer for the murderer. That is not 
all. It was a prayer for just such sinners as ourselves. 

“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving 
kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies 
blot out my transgressions. 

“Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me 
from my sin. 

“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right 
spirit within me. 

“Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy 
holy spirit from me. 

“Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me 
with thy free spirit. 

“Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners 
shall be converted unto thee.” 

Yes, David prayed. The King with voice choked 
with sobs made his humble confession to almighty God. 
And what he said as he fell in His presence was that 
universal confession: “I have sinned.” Over and over 
again he speaks of his sin as his own, as “my sin,” “my 
iniquity,” “my transgression.” He offers no excuse. 
He pleads no mitigating circumstance. He lays the 
blame on no other shoulders. 

How, there is real penitence here. But as long as 
we confess our sins and then excuse them there is no 
hope for us. A man came into my study the other 
day and confessed his sins with tears. I prayed with 
him and then he prayed. And he went away. But I 
have but little hope of that man. Why? Oh, he con- 


170 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


fessed that he had been a great sinner, hut he laid the 
blame for the fact on somebody else. Now, brother, do 
you not see that as long as there is an excuse for your 
sin you are not guilty? As long as somebody else is 
to blame for what you do then you are blameless. To 
come with excuses before God with a. stain upon your 
heart is to go away as stained as you came with the 
added stain of hypocrisy. There is no excuse for sin. 
May God help us to know it. Therefore come with this 
heart cry upon your lips, for it belongs to the best of 
men and it belongs to the worst of men, “I have 
sinned.” 

Not only does David acknowledge his sin, but with 
conscience illuminated by the Holy Spirit he sees his 
sin as an act of rebellion against God. “Against thee, 
thee only have I sinned.” That sounds strange. He 
had sinned against Uriah. He had sinned against the 
wife of Uriah. He had sinned against the children in 
his home. He had sinned against his kingdom. He 
had sinned against society, but all this was as nothing 
in comparison with the awful blow he had struck at the 
infinite Father who loved him. 

Sin wrongs everybody, but it shoots its sharpest shaft 
into the heart of Jesus Christ. All who love you may 
be wounded by your sin, but the one who is most 
deeply wounded is the One who loves you best. The 
sufferings of Jesus Christ were not ended on Calvary. 
Day by day He is being wounded by those who sin 
against His love, and every act of wrongdoing is an 
act of outlawry against God. And every transgression 
wounds the heart of God. Oh, that we might see it and 
fall before Him, as David fell, and say, “I have sinned 
against thee, against thee only have I sinned.” 


A MURDERER’S PRAYER—DAVID 


171 


And having made his confession, for what is this 
hlood-stained and guilty man making request? For 
what does he ask? Listen: “Have mercy upon me.” 
Oh, that is your prayer and that is mine. That is the 
prayer for every one of us. “Have mercy upon me.” 
Mercy is kindness to the undeserving. David did not 
ask for justice, I am not going to ask for that. He 
smote upon his breast like the poor publican and said, 
“God, be merciful to me a sinner.” 

And the measure of God’s mercy! What is it ? How 
much mercy does David ask ? He does not say, “Have 
mercy upon me according to my sincerity.” He did 
not count much on his own sincerity. He does not say, 
“Have mercy upon me according to my rank, according 
to my position.” These, too, went for nothing. He 
does not say, “Have mercy upon me according to my 
genius, according to my vast ability.” He does not 
even say, “Have mercy upon me according to the depth 
of my earnestness and the bitterness of my tears.” But 
this was his prayer: “Have mercy upon me, O God, 
according to thy loving kindness.” Oh, that is the 
request that he needed to make. It is a petition that is 
suited to all of us. This is true because it is a prayer 
for infinite mercy. 

And will you see what is the content of that mercy ? 
In what is the mercy of God to consist ? It is to con¬ 
sist, first of all, in forgiveness. “Wash me,” he cries, 
“and I shall be whiter than snow.” David is so tired 
of being unclean. He is so weary of being soiled and 
filthy and unholy. He said, “Lord, make me clean 
once more. I know my sins are as scarlet, but if thou 
dost wash me I shall be whiter than snow.” 

And not only does he ask for cleansing, but he asks 


172 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


for a new heart. He wants a new nature. He realizes 
that he is not only a sinner, but that he is sinful. And 
so he said, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” 

“Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart, 

Come quickly from above. 

Write thy new name upon my heart, 

Thy new best name of love.” 

He yearns that God may take away out of his bosom 
the heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh. He 
wants to be horn again, born from above, born with the 
spirit of lust dethroned and with the Spirit of God 
enthroned. And so he said, “Create within me a clean 
heart.” 

And this man is not seeking these blessings simply 
that he may escape hell. I do not think there is the 
least element of the fear of punishment in this prayer. 
I believe the thought of punishment would have been 
rather welcome to a man who was suffering as David 
was suffering. He would have felt as if it might have 
eased his conscience a bit. He is not afraid of being 
punished. But he is afraid of that uncleanliness that 
is robbing him of the presence of God. And in this 
prayer he is crying like a lost child after the father 
that he has wronged and driven from his presence. He 
feels that life itself would be hell without the divine 
presence. And so he is clinging to God’s skirts and 
saying, “Cast me not away from thy presence. Lord, 
do not throw me away. Do not cast me off utterly. 
I know I deserve it, but my heart crieth out after thee. 
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth 
my soul after thee, O God.” 

And then he seems to gather courage, and he reminds 
the Lord of the old days in which he knew Him, of 


A MURDERER’S PRAYER—DAVID 


173 


the old intimacies and the old fellowships of yester¬ 
day. And he sobs out one more petition: “Restore unto 
me the joy of thy salvation. Lord, give me back the 
lost song. Give me back the radiant face. My tears 
have been my meat day and night. My sin is ever 
before me. The whole world has looked red to me since 
that terrible crime. Let me know the old joy that will 
be so blessedly new. Give me back the light of thy 
countenance. Grant, 0 Lord, that the lame may again 
leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb burst forth 
once more into song.” 

I wonder if I am not talking to men and women to¬ 
night that once knew God but have lost Him. It may 
not have been through some great and glaring sin like 
that of David. The chances are altogether against that. 
Most of us do not sin in that hideous way. You have 
lost Him maybe simply through neglect of duty, 
through carelessness or through the tug and pressure 
of the world. But tonight His face is hidden from you 
and the once blessed experience is only a memory. Oh, 
will you not join with me in the prayer of this 
blood-guilty man, “Restore unto me the joy of thy 
salvation” ? 

And last of all, this man sobs out his vow of conse¬ 
cration. He said, “Lord, if thou wilt take me back 
again, if thou wilt wash me and restore me once more 
to thy favor, I will tell the story of thy redeeming 
grace. I will let the world know that thou delightest in 
mercy and that with thee is plenteous redemption. Re¬ 
store unto me the joy of thy salvation and uphold me 
with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors 
thy ways and sinners shall be converted unto thee.” 

Certainly he ought to be willing to do that. Cer¬ 
tainly any man ought to be willing. How often we 


174 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


want to be healed and then are ashamed of the physi¬ 
cian. O heart, God is calling ns always. He is say¬ 
ing, “Go home to thy friends and tell how great things 
the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion 
on thee.” 

And what was the outcome of this man’s prayer? 
You know. God heard it and saved him. “I have 
sinned.” And the answer came: “And the Lord hath 
put away thy sin.” It is a blessed truth. It is as true 
today as it was in that far-off yesterday. “For if we 
confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us 
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

And this murderer rises from his knees, and his tears 
of penitence have been kissed into jewels. And he is 
true to his vows. He does teach transgressors the ways 
of God. And the lilt of his song rings down the cen¬ 
turies. “Blessed is the man whose transgression is for¬ 
given, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto 
whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity. Rejoice in the 
Lord, ye righteous, and shout thy joy, all ye that are 
upright in heart.” 

Yes, he sings as he rises from his knees. And he 
sings as he continues the journey of his life. And he 
goes down into the valley with a song. And he walks 
into the waters of death with the lilt of his music still 
ringing in the air. We lean across the years and hear 
him tonight. The music floats to us sweet as that 
which rang above the Judean hills. 

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth 
me beside the still waters. 

“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of right¬ 
eousness for his name’s sake. 

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of 


A MURDERER’S PRAYER—DAVID 175 

death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me. 

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine 
enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth 
over. 

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days 
of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for¬ 
ever.” 

When I remember that this was the song of a mur¬ 
derer I thank God and take courage and believe that 
there is hope and pardon even for me. That though my 
sins are as scarlet and my life streaked and soiled with 
many transgressions I may yet be made every whit 
whole. And when my sense of sin tends to make me 
dumb in His presence I shall dare to pour out before 
Him the prayer of this murderer, “Have mercy upon 
me, O God, according to thy loving kindness.” 


XV 


THE STARVATION COMMITTEE—THE FOUR 

LEPERS 

II Kings 7:3 

“Why sit we here until we die?” This is the wise 
question that was propounded by the members of a cer¬ 
tain committee that met a great many years ago. The 
place of meeting is the gate of the city of Samaria. 
Samaria is being besieged by the army of Syria. For 
many days it has been closely shut in. The food supply 
has been cut off. Hunger is stalking its streets. Unless 
relief soon comes many will die. Among the first to 
feel the pinch of hunger were the members of this 
starvation committee. They were beggars to begin 
with. A calamity that brought privation to those in 
better circumstances would soon mean utter starvation 
to themselves. So they are dying by the inch now, 
these four leprous beggars. And it is to cope with 
their trying situation that this committee meeting is 
called. 

Now the personnel of this starvation committee is 
very interesting. Its interest, however, does not lie in 
the fact that these men were members of the aristocracy. 
They are not conspicuous for either their rank or wealth. 
Every man of them is a leper. Every man is penniless. 
Every man is being tortured by hunger. Every man is 
fisticuffing with ghastly death. But we are interested 
in these men because of their fine common sense. 
Through their deliberations they came to the wisest 
possible conclusions. 


176 



THE STARVATION COMMITTEE 


177 


The first conclusion to which this committee comes is 
this—they resolved upon some kind of action. “Ke- 
solved that we now act, for why sit we here until we 
die ?” It is a good day for any committee, it is a good 
day for any member of any committee when such a 
decision is reached. It is so hard to get action. It is 
so easy for us just to sit and sit and deliberate and de¬ 
liberate and talk and talk and never do anything. 

The reason, I think, that this committee avoided such 
a disaster was the fact that they were being driven to 
action by the pressure of great and compelling needs. 
If all your needs are met it is very easy for you to 
defer doing anything. If you have no heartache, if 
you have no burning thirst, if you have no gnawing 
hunger, then I am not at all surprised that you do 
nothing. Christian can remain very quietly at home in 
the City of Destruction till he becomes conscious of a 
terrible burden that is crushing him down. But hav¬ 
ing realized this, inactivity is no longer possible. He 
must needs put his fingers into his ears and rush away 
even from the loved ones that would detain him, crying 
“Life, life, eternal life!” 

The second reason that led these wise men to resolve 
upon action was that they knew that almost any action 
is better than inaction. They realized that it is better 
to make a thousand blunders and to suffer a thousand 
defeats than to refuse to battle. They knew that it is 
far better to fall down again and again than to he too 
cowardly to ever really stand upon your feet. They 
considered that of all failures, the supreme failure was 
to be so afraid of failing that you do nothing at all. 

They knew then, these wise men, that there was abso¬ 
lutely nothing to he gained by inaction. “Suppose we 
simply sit still,” one might have suggested. “If we 


178 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


do,” came the quick and intelligent reply, “we will gain 
nothing. We will surely die, that is all. It is needless 
for us to wait for something to turn up. It is needless 
for us to lie down here in the gate of this city with the 
expectation that somebody will bring us a pitcher of 
milk and a loaf of bread during the night while we 
sleep. Waiting will not get us anywhere. It never 
has. It never will. We can keep on waiting if we 
make up our minds to it, but the one sure reward of 
our waiting will not be food. It will not be satisfaction 
for our hunger. It will be death and death only. 
Therefore, why sit we here until we die? Inaction 
means certain death. Therefore let us act. Let us do 
something.” 

And now I bring to you an old question: “How shall 
we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Mark 
you, the question is not, How shall we escape if we 
fight against God ? It is not, How shall we escape if 
we seek to destroy the Church ? It is not, How shall 
we escape if we burn up our Bibles ? It is not, How 
shall we escape if we become drunkards, bootleggers or 
gamblers ? It is not, How shall we escape if we be¬ 
come adulterers or murderers ? The question is this: 
“How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation ?” 
How shall we escape if we let the salvation that is 
offered to us in Christ Jesus alone? 

And what is the answer to that question ? There is 
but one possible answer to it. There is no escape. To 
refuse to accept salvation is to miss being saved. To 
refuse to know Jesus Christ as a personal Savior is 
simply to miss the privilege of knowing Him. How 
shall I escape if I let my food alone ? Answer—I shall 
not escape. How did Mayor MacSwiney escape when 
he refused to eat ? He did not escape. He died. And 


THE STARVATION COMMITTEE 179 

the reason he died was not because he destroyed the 
food supply of Ireland and England. The reason he 
died was because he neglected to eat. And so shall 
you die spiritually and die eternally if you refuse 
Jesus Christ, who alone is the Bread of Life and the 
Water of Life. 

How shall I escape if I neglect all means of mental 
development ? The answer again is just this: There is 
no escape. I will simply remain illiterate and ignorant. 
It is not necessary that I destroy the school buildings 
of the land. It is not necessary that I bum down all 
the public libraries. It is not necessary that I muti¬ 
late the books. All that is necessary is just this—that 
I simply let them alone. If I am to reach my highest 
mental development I must make an effort to do so. 
But to continue uncultured and ignorant all that is 
necessary is that I do nothing at all. 

It may be that I am speaking to some who are not 
musicians. Yet you may love music. But how did you 
come to fail to be a musician ? The reason you are not 
a master is not due to the fact that you have been a 
wrecker of violins and of musical instruments in gen¬ 
eral. It is not because you have been a murderer of 
musicians. I do not say for a moment, however, that 
there have not been times when you have felt like doing 
so. When, for instance, you have heard a solo without 
either words or tune, or have witnessed a song turned 
into a kind of trapeze for the performing of vocal 
stunts. Then you may have felt that murder would 
have been a gratifying procedure. But after all, that 
does not account for your ignorance of music. You are 
ignorant because you have simply neglected music. 

The truth of the matter is that you do not expect 
to be proficient in literature, you do not expect to be 


180 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


proficient in music, in baseball, in tennis, or even in 
mumblepeg by simply letting them alone. You do not 
expect to acquire skill in anything by the neglect of 
that particular thing. And yet such is our folly in 
matters of religion that we sometimes seem to fancy 
that we can be Christians by simply ignoring Christ. 
We seem to hope that we can reap the benefits of the 
death and resurrection of our Lord by simply sitting 
idly by and acting as if the Bible were only a myth and 
the supreme truths of revelation nothing more than 
cunningly devised fables. Oh, I commend to you the 
good sense of this starvation committee. Its members 
resolved that at least they would do something. 

“He made no mistakes, took no wrong road. 

He never fumbled the ball. 

He never went down ’neath the weight of a load— 

He simply did nothing at all. 

“He lost no hard fight in defense of the right. 

Never bled with his back to the wall. 

He never fell faint in his climb to the light— 

He simply did nothing at all. 

“So death came nigh, for life slipped by. 

And he feared for the Judgment Hall; 

When they asked him why, he said with a sigh, 

H simply did nothing at all/ 

“Oh, God will pardon your blunder, my friend, 

Or regard with pity your fall; 

But the one big sell that surely means hell 
Is to simply do nothing at all.” 

Now, having resolved on action the next question to 
decide was what they would do. There were two roads 
open to them, seeing that they had determined to move. 


THE STARVATION COMMITTEE 


181 


One of these roads led into the city. “Suppose we go 
into the city,” said one. “No,” was the reply. “We 
have been in the city. We cannot obtain bread there. 
Death is an absolute certainty if we go back into the 
city of Samaria.” So you see that they have two cer¬ 
tainties before them, certain death to stay where they 
are, certain death if they go into the city. Then one 
offers a second resolution. “Resolved that we fall into 
the hands of the Syrians.” 

Certainly the man who offered that resolution pro¬ 
duced a bit of a sensation. The starving men about him 
gasp. “Resolved that we go out and actually put our¬ 
selves into the hands of the enemy!” At first they 
looked at the mover of that resolution as if they thought 
him absolutely mad. But they changed their minds as 
he began to speak to his motion. Listen to him. Pos¬ 
sibly he spoke somewhat after this fashion. 

“Gentlemen, I am not asking you to join me in an 
expedition to the camp of the Syrians because I think 
we can force them to give us bread. There are tens of 
thousands of them and they are armed and we are only 
unarmed beggars. Nor am I asking you to go because 
these Syrians are our friends. They are not our 
friends. They are our enemies. Nor am I asking you 
to go because they have invited us and promised to 
feed us if we go. They have done nothing of the kind. 
Nor am I basing my plea on the fact that others have 
gone to their camp and have been helped. They have 
not fed one single man of us so far as I know. My one 
big reason for offering this seemingly mad resolution is 
this: It is not absolutely certain that they will kill us 
if we go. There is, of course, every probability that 
they will. The chances are a thousand to one against 
us. Yet there is that one chance. It seems to me 


182 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


sensible to take that cliance, for to remain here or to 
go into the city is certain death.” 

How this man was truly wise. He is worth listening 
to. “Here we stand,” says he, “at the forks of the 
road. If we remain here we will die. Two roads 
stretch away from us, one into the city and the other 
to the camp of the Syrians. If we take the road to 
the city we know what we will find. We are absolutely 
sure of it. We will find death. If we take the road 
that leads to the camp of the Syrians we will probably 
find death. Yet death is not an absolute certainty. 
Therefore, I move that we fall into the hands of the 
Syrians.” 

The resolution was put and carried unanimously. 
And at once they rose, though it was now twilight, 
and put their resolution into action. That is fine. If 
a good resolution comes to you, act on it at once. These 
men turned their faces toward the enemy. They do 
not go eagerly as men who have great expectations. 
They know that there is every chance that they will be 
killed. They know that at any moment as they come 
near the camp they are likely to be challenged. They 
know that at any moment they are likely to be struck 
down. And yet they go knowing that there is nothing 
to be lost by going. If they are killed their fate will 
be no worse than they would have met if they had 
stayed where they were. 

How they are very near the camp. They have be¬ 
come exceedingly cautious. They crouch upon their 
sore knees. Every instant they are expecting to hear 
one shout, “Halt! Who goes there?” Every moment 
they are looking to feel the prick of a spear or the 
thrust of a sword. But there is no challenge and no 
enemy springs upon them. In fact there is not a man 


THE STARVATION COMMITTEE 


1 83 


in sight. This is true though they are now within a 
very few feet of the first tent. They crawl cautiously 
nearer till they are able to touch the tent with their 
hands. Is it life that is on the inside or is it death? 
They do not know. Then full of fear one slightly lifts 
a fold of the tent and peeps within. Not a soul is 
there. They gather courage and enter. 

And what a glad surprise is theirs. Instead of find¬ 
ing a deadly enemy they find something else that brings 
to them unutterable joy. They find an abundant sup¬ 
ply of food. They fall to and eat with the greediness 
of starving men, fruits and bread and cheese and old 
Syrian wine. And when they have eaten all in the 
first tent they creep to the next and eat again until at 
last they can eat no more. And then they begin to 
gather up the treasures of silver and gold and costly 
garments and hide them. And after they have en¬ 
riched themselves and after they have fully satisfied 
their hunger, they find that enough remains for tens 
of thousands just as poverty stricken and just as 
hunger pinched as they themselves were. 

So you see that in taking their one flimsy chance they 
found everything for which their hearts yearned. Why 
do you not act with something of their wisdom ? You 
are not asked to trust yourself to an enemy. You are 
asked to trust yourself to a Friend. The One to whom 
I am calling you is One who loves you with an ever¬ 
lasting love. He is One who has come to seek and to 
save that which is lost. He is come to seek you for 
love’s sake. “For God so loved the world that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

Then your case is unlike that of the lepers because 
you are invited. “Come, for all things are now ready.” 


184 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


You are expected. You are waited for at the King’s 
court. A banquet has been prepared for you at an 
infinite price. Your Lord and Master has sent me to 
you with this wooing word upon my lips: “Come.” 
Over and over again it is repeated throughout the Word. 
“Come unto me all that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest.” You are invited. Your wel¬ 
come is sure. “Eor him that cometh unto me I will in 
no wise cast out.” 

And if the word of our Lord needed any proof we 
have the testimony of an innumerable company that 
no man can number. N"o doubt you have met those who 
are members of the Church in whose experience you 
did not believe. But, thank God, you have met the 
other kind, too. You have seen those and have been 
privileged to know those who have been wonderfully 
transformed and remade by the power of God. And 
these today are ready to declare with a conviction that 
we cannot resist that “He is able to save unto the utter¬ 
most them that come unto God by Him.” They show 
by the peace and power and richness of their lives that 
it is true that “He satisfieth the longing soul.” 

But maybe some of you do not feel quite sure. You 
may be saying this: “Suppose I go down front and 
surrender to Christ the best I know and enter the 
Church and seek to become a faithful follower of the 
Lord, would it get me anywhere ? Will I come to know 
Christ for myself ? I am not sure that I would.” Well, 
assuming that you are not sure and assuming that the 
testimony of all who have tried Him and found Him 
true is worth nothing, this at least remains: You know 
that you are not going to get anywhere doing as you 
have been doing. You know that your inaction will 


THE STARVATION COMMITTEE 185 

never bring you into the blessed fellowship of Jesus 
Christ. You certainly will never find salvation by re¬ 
fusing to take it. Since this is true, suppose you try 
the other way. To travel the same road you have been 
traveling means death. At least death is not a cer¬ 
tainty if you make an effort to know Jesus. So then 
have the good sense to give yourself the advantage of 
the doubt. 

Suppose you do come, suppose you make an honest 
effort to be a Christian and suppose, though it is a 
thing that never happened, you do not get anywhere 
at all. Have you lost anything? Are you any the 
worse off ? If the Prodigal Son leaves the company of 
the swine in the Far Country and comes home, even if 
he is not welcome he is no worse off. If he is still 
allowed to be hungry at the Father’s house that is no 
worse fate than was his in the Far Country. And if 
no rich garment is given him, remember that he had 
only beggars’ rags where he was. 

I suppose that is what the Prodigal thought when he 
turned his face toward home. He did not seem to 
expect much. He thought maybe by humbling himself 
and begging he could get a place in the servants’ quar¬ 
ters. “I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight 
and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me 
as one of thy hired servants.” That was the speech 
he had made up his mind to make. But think of the 
glory of his surprise. “When he was yet a great way 
off his father saw him and ran and fell on his neck and 
kissed him.” And when the lad began to make his 
abject speech his father broke in on it and said, “Bring 
forth the best robe and put it on him and put a ring 
on his hand and shoes on his feet. And bring hither 


186 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


the fatted calf and kill it and let ns eat and be merry.” 
Oh, there is a glorious surprise for you if you will 
only come to your Lord. 

V But there is something else very fine about this com¬ 
mittee. They had a second meeting after they had 
eaten their fill and had enriched themselves. “Then 
they said one to another, We do not well. This day is 
a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace; if we 
tarry till the morning some mischief will come upon 
us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the 
king’s household.” Oh, great committee! Great¬ 
hearted lepers! They said, “Our conduct in this matter 
is mighty shabby. We are altogether unworthy of the 
great blessings that have come to us. Here is more 
than we could use in a thousand lifetimes and there are 
multitudes that are starving yonder in the city. What 
ingrates we are for not hurrying away and carrying 
the good news to them, for this is a day of good tidings.” 

Not only did they decide to tell the good news to 
others, but they decided to tell that good news at once. 
They said, “If we wait till the morning light some 
calamity will befall us. We have a wonderful story to 
tell. We will not postpone the telling of it till our 
friends yonder in the city have starved to death. We 
will go at once. The news we have is blessed news. 
The needs we are seeking to meet are very pressing 
needs. We will tell it and we will tell it now.” 

Oh, come, you members of the Church who know 
the Lord, and sit at the feet of these leprous beggars. 
The Lord give us grace to learn from them. You have 
heard of the Bread of Life. You claim to be feasting 
on that Bread for yourself. You have heard of the 
Water of Life. You claim to have kissed that brim¬ 
ming and abiding spring with your own parched lips. 


THE STARVATION COMMITTEE 187 

Are your high claims true ? If so, how can you sit 
still ? How can you remain silent ? This, my breth¬ 
ren, is a day of good tidings. We have the most won¬ 
derful story ever told. May the Eord give us grace 
to tell it. 

Then, too, we must realize that this is a needy world. 
The people of Samaria were no more starving for physi¬ 
cal bread on that day than our friends and our loved 
ones are starving for the Bread of Life. I read some 
time ago of a man who shot himself in one of our 
great cities. He left a letter recounting the terrible 
sorrows through which he had passed, his hard fight 
against despair. Then he added: “All these dark 
dreary days I have been hoping that some man would 
ask me to become a Christian. 77 Oh, the sin and the 
need and the hunger of heart! Go to these needy men 
with your message. Go now. If you tarry some evil 
will come upon you. It will he the evil of a guilty 
conscience and a lost sense of the divine presence. 

But to you who have never surrendered your lHes 
to Christ I make this appeal, I bring this question: 
Why sit you here until you die ? What hope have you 
for salvation apart from Jesus Christ? Do you not 
know that “there is none other name under heaven 
given among men whereby you must be saved 77 ? Do 
you not realize that if you are ever saved you must act ? 
Do you not know that if you ever possess you must 
take? Are you not conscious of the fact that if Jesus 
Christ ever enters into your life you must of your 
own choice let Him in ? “Behold I stand at the door 
and knock. If any man will hear my voice and will 
open the door I will come in and sup with him and he 
with me.” But you must open the door. Will you not 
open it tonight ? Why sit you here until you die ? 


188 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


A few years ago I was conducting a service for chil¬ 
dren and young people. I held up a piece of money 
and said, “I will give this piece of money to any one 
who was fifteen years of age his last birthday. Who 
will come and get it V ’ But one fifteen-year-old looked 
at another and nobody moved. I then dropped to four¬ 
teen, then to thirteen, then to twelve, then eleven. But 
nobody moved. I saw one lad sitting on the edge of 
his seat ready for the spring. I did not know his age, 
but I knew when the time came he was going to take me 
at my word. I called for ten, and nine and the word 
was hardly out of my mouth till he came and claimed 
the money. 

The next day after this service a woebegone lad came 
to me and said: “Brother Chappell, when are you going 
to give away some more money V 7 I said, “Let me ask 
you a question. How old are you?” “Twelve,” was 
the reply. “Why did you not get that which I gave 
away yesterday ?” Why did he not ? It was not because 
he ran from the room when I made the proposition. It 
was not because he swore at me and threw a book at 
me. How did he miss it ? He simply let it alone. So 
you may miss all the fine prizes of life. So you may 
miss the supreme prize, the privilege of knowing and 
loving and serving Jesus Christ. Why will you do it? 
Answer this question: Why sit you here until you die ? 


XVI 


THE UNDYING FIRE—MOSES 

Exodus S: 2 

“And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in 
a flame of fire out of the midst of a hush: and he 
looked, and behold, the hush burned with fire, and the 
bush was not consumed.” This is a marvelous story. 
One morning an old man set out to his usual task of 
taking care of a flock of sheep. And the very next 
morning that same man set out to become the leader 
and builder of a nation. How was this great change 
brought about ? How was this modest shepherd induced 
to give up his quiet pastoral life for the feverish life 
of a great leader? How was this silent dweller of the 
desert made into a lawgiver and a prophet, both for his 
own race and for the world ? 

There is but one adequate answer to this question. 
That answer is found in the text. “And the Angel 
of the Lord appeared unto him.” But for this experi¬ 
ence I am confident that the Moses we know had never 
existed. But for this experience it is altogether prob¬ 
able that the greatest character in the Old Testament 
would have passed to his reward without having filled 
any larger place in the world than that of sheep keeper 
for a Midianitish priest. 

There are many reasons that lead us to the convic¬ 
tion that Moses the shepherd would have continued to 

be a shepherd to the end of the chapter. First he was 

189 


190 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


now an old man. He was eighty years of age. Men 
do not work revolutions as a rule at that age. Ho more 
do they experience revolutions. “Can a man he horn 
again when he is old V 9 It is possible, hut it is highly 
improbable. If we do not find our Lord and find our 
place in His kingdom in the springtime of life the 
chances are that^we will never find it. 

Then Moses had made an effort at this work of free¬ 
ing Israel and had failed. His had been a very dis¬ 
appointing experience. To liberate Israel had been one 
of the dreams of his life. It had been breathed into 
his heart in his early childhood. It had been with him 
during the course of his training at the royal univer¬ 
sity. His big life purpose, once he had come to the 
throne, was to set his people free. 

One day he had gone to visit them. There he had 
seen the tragedy of slavery eye to eye. An Egyptian 
taskmaster was maltreating a certain Hebrew slave. 
Moses lost his temper. “His soul leaped to its feet 
fire-eyed and defiant.” In his hot anger he struck 
the offender dead. He then dug a shallow grave, 
tumbled his victim into it, covered him with sand and 
went back to the palace. 

As he turned away from this scene he was upheld by 
a twofold conviction. Eirst, he believed that the blow 
that he struck was just. He thought that he had taken 
his first step towards the emancipation of his people. 
Second, he counted upon the loyalty of those for whom 
he had struck the blow. Ho Egyptian had been by 
when the deed was done. He counted therefore upon 
its being kept secret, since he was sure that the 
Israelites would not betray their leader who was ven¬ 
turing so much in their behalf., 

But a second visit changed all this. On this occasion 



THE UNDYING FIRE—MOSES 


191 


he saw two Hebrews in a hot contention. Again he 
interfered. He urged them to desist on the ground 
that they were brothers. But his interference was not 
welcomed. Instead, one of the parties to the conflict 
turned upon him and said with biting sarcasm: “Who 
made you a prince and a judge over us ? Do you mean 
to kill me as you killed the Egyptian V’ 

This contemptuous question was a revelation to 
Moses. It told him of certain facts. It struck his 
hopes dead. It was a revelation, first of all, of the 
fact that his leadership was not acknowledged nor ac¬ 
cepted. In the second place it'let him know that the 
blow that he had struck in their defense was not in the 
least appreciated. His effort had not wakened the 
slightest loyalty in those for whom it was made. In 
the third place it was a revelation of the fact that 
these Hebrew people would not do to depend upon. 
He discovered that they were not only physical but 
moral slaves. Their fetters were not only around their 
limbs, but around their souls as well. He had everv 
reason to believe that this miserable knave who had 
just asked him this question would betray him to the 
first Egyptian taskmaster that came along. 

What was he to do under these trying circumstances ? 
There was but one thing to do as he considered the 
matter, and that was to leave the country. So he had 
left Egypt. He turned away from the greatest king¬ 
dom in the world when he had his foot upon the very 
steps of the throne. He buried himself in the Midian 
desert. After such an experience it was little likely 
that he would ever undertake the task again. 

Besides all this, Moses was now very pleasantly sit¬ 
uated. His first years in this country of Midian were 
very trying and bitter years. He brooded over his loss 


1 92 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

and his fruitless sacrifice. He brooded over the hope¬ 
less plight of his people. He suffered in his own lone¬ 
liness. The name of his firstborn signifies this. He 
called him a name whose meaning is: “I have been a 
stranger in a strange land.” 

But these earlier and bitter years have long dropped 
into the past. Moses has now been here for forty 
years. He is comfortably married. He has not gone 
into business for himself. He is looking after the 
flocks of his wealthy father-in-law. By and by the old 
man will pass out and his son-in-law will have nothing 
to do but to step into his shoes and inherit his property. 
Yes, Moses was, as we say, well fixed. 

And that, my brethren, constitutes a great difficulty. 
How rare it is to see a young man of wealth enter the 
ministry. How exceedingly rare to find a young girl 
from the home of a millionaire preparing for the for¬ 
eign field. God seems almost shut up to the poor for 
the choice of those who are to do special Christian 
work. 

I know a young man, gifted and well-trained. In 
his youthful and more enthusiastic days he volunteered 
for the ministry. He clung to that resolution for some 
years. He even passed through one of our theological 
seminaries. But he will never preach. He has too 
much money. And he still further lessened his chances 
by marrying a woman of wealth. Money is a great 
handicap in entering the ministry or even in entering 
the Kingdom. Let a man who is already in the min¬ 
istry become suddenly rich and the chances are ex¬ 
ceedingly great that he will take sore throat and have 
to quit. 

But in spite of all these heavy handicaps Moses did 
respond to God’s call. He did turn aside from the 


THE UNDYING FIRE—MOSES 


193 


easeful life of the shepherd to be the storm-center of 
his people for near a half a century. How do you 
account for him ? There is hut one answer, I repeat, 
and that is the answer of this old story. On the hack 
side of the Midian desert one day he came face to face 
with God. Look at the picture. He is walking along 
old familiar paths. He has been there hundreds of 
times. As he watches his sheep he is thinking, as he 
has thought so often during these forty years, of 
his past, of his disappointed dreams and his blighted 
ambitions. 

But chancing to lift his eyes, his attention is held by 
a rather strange sight on the mountain side. He sees 
a bush there that seems to be on fire. He watches it, 
expecting that almost instantly it will crumble into 
gray ashes. But to his amazement it burns on. The 
fire in the bush attracted his attention. The fact that 
the fire did not die excited his wonder. 

How was it that God was able to speak to Moses 
through this burning bush ? It was not because Moses 
was a particular favorite with God. God is just as 
willing to speak to you and me as he was to speak to 
him. He is speaking to us constantly, only we refuse 
to hear. 

“Earth’s crammed with Heaven, 

And every common bush aflame with God. 

But only he who sees takes off his shoes. 

The rest stand round and pick blackberries.” 

God was able to speak to Moses in the first place 
because Moses in spite of all his trying experiences 
had not allowed himself to become a cynic. He had 
not lost the child heart. He could still appreciate the 


194 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


ministry of surprise. He could still be made to clap his 
bands in wonder. Many another man would have said: 
“That burning bush seems altogether out of the ordi¬ 
nary. But I know it is ordinary after all, because 
there is nothing new under the sun.” And so saying 
he would have passed on and have received no mes¬ 
sage. 

In the second place Moses had not allowed himself 
to become the bondslave of things. He was still free 
enough to turn aside. “I will now turn aside,” he says. 
That is where many of us miss our vision. We will 
not turn aside. We are too busy. Just as we are think¬ 
ing of doing so, we are seized with a panic lest one of 
our sheep should get away. Thus we hurry on, day 
after day, taking no time to turn aside and hear God’s 
voice in the secret place of prayer, or to hear His voice 
as He speaks through His Word, or to hear His voice 
through the ministry of the Church. 

Nor was Moses too tired to turn aside. Had you 
been there you might have sighed and said: “Well, that 
looks queer indeed, that burning bush, but I have fol¬ 
lowed the sheep so long that I am clean tired out. But 
for this, I would turn aside and see.” So we sav 
today. For instance, you say you work six days in 
the week. On Sunday you just have to relax. This 
you do by sleeping late, by doing your odd mending 
and washing, by working in the garden or playing golf, 
or painting your garage, or mending your auto, or 
hurrying off to a picnic. 

This you do because you are so tired. And if you 
are forbidden to rest by these very charming methods 
you go to the movies. Of course the movies have to 
be open on Sunday because that is the only time that 
the laboring folks have to go. And yet the day laborers 


THE UNDYING FIRE—MOSES 195 

in my neighborhood quit work about four o’clock and 
have from then to midnight to attend six days in a 
week. What somniferous lies we tell ourselves! 

Moses turned aside. Not only did he turn aside, 
hut he turned aside reverently. Had he turned aside to 
subject this hush to candid criticism, had he blustered 
up to take its leaves to the laboratory, I do not think 
he would have heard anything. A spirit of irreverence 
will put out the fire for you everywhere. If you have 
no reverence for the truth you will not find it. If you 
have no reverence for the Word of God it will have no 
message for you. If you have no reverence for Jesus 
Christ, He will likely he to you “as a root out of dry 
ground, with no form nor comeliness.” 

Reverence is the doorway to knowledge. How did 
Huxley learn science? He sat down before her, he 
tells us, as a little child. He approached science rever¬ 
ently and science told him her secrets. Had he ap¬ 
proached Jesus Christ in the same spirit he would have 
been as great a saint as he was a scientist. Let us 
cultivate reverence. Let us pray more earnestly the 
first petition of the Lord’s prayer: “Hallowed he thy 
name.” For this is almost a lost virtue. Well did 
Irvin Cobb say that if we were to examine the hump of 
reverence on the average man’s head we would find it to 
he a dent. 

Moses, you see, still had the child heart. He was 
still able to turn aside. He was reverent. Therefore 
God could speak to him. And what did He say through 
this undying fire that flamed in the hush ? He told 
Moses that the secret of staying power was in Himself. 
That this hush should burn was not so wonderful, hut 
that it should keep on burning was only to he accounted 
for by the power of God within it. Moses at once began 


196 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 

to see his own failure in a new light. He himself had 
once been on fire. He himself once glowed with a fiery 
hatred against slavery and oppression. But where was 
the fire now ? Gone out long ago and in his heart today 
were only dust and ashes. 

Why had this fire that had once burned so fiercely in 
the heart of Moses gone out? It had not gone out be¬ 
cause freedom had ceased to be desirable for the chil¬ 
dren of Israel. It had not gone out because the land 
of promise had ceased to exist. It had not gone out 
because righteousness was no longer a precious treas¬ 
ure. Moses had quit struggling, but this was not his 
reason for doing so. 

Nor had Moses quit because the bondage of his 
people had ceased to be a galling and bitter thing. 
Slavery was just as tragic and just as damning after 
forty years as it was on that distant day when he had 
struck his one blow against it. It had lost none of its 
hatefulness, none of its power to wreck and to ruin. 
He had not ceased to burn, then, against wrong be¬ 
cause wrong had ceased to exist or had become less 
wrong. 

Nor are these your reasons. Where, may I ask, are 
the enthusiasms of your earlier years ? How comes it 
that you have not struck a blow in behalf of right and 
against wrong since you came to this city ? How is it 
that you have ceased to glow with enthusiasm for 
righteousness ? How is it that you have ceased to burn 
with indignation against wrong? It is not because 
right is any less right. It is not because sin is any less 
hideous and damning. Sin is just as terrible today as 
it was yesterday, just as awful as when Jesus hung on 
the nails in His grim battle against it. 

Nor had Moses ceased to burn for any reasons that 


THE UNDYING FIRE—MOSES 


197 


lie was probably accustomed to give to bimself. He 
bad not quit, for instance, for lack of appreciation. It 
is true that bis people bad not appreciated him. It is 
also true that it is dreadfully hard to work without ap¬ 
preciation. I need it and you need it. But while ap¬ 
preciation is desirable it is not an absolute necessity. A 
word of praise may make our day seem brighter. It 
may make our load seem lighter and our climb up the 
bill seem less difficult. But if that word is not spoken 
we must still carry our burden and still continue our 
upward climb. 

The task that Moses undertook forty years ago was 
a very difficult task, but that was not the real reason 
why be quit. The stupidity of bis people, their un¬ 
willingness to be free, these things were very discourag¬ 
ing. They were very depressing, but that should not 
have been sufficient to turn him from his task. They 
would not have been sufficient but for this fundamental 
lack. He lacked what the bush had—the presence of 
God. 

Watch him as he goes to that one fleeting effort. On 
whom is he depending as he strikes the Egyptian dead 
at his feet ? He is counting on himself and on the loy¬ 
alty of his people. God is not in the task. There is 
no “Lo, I am with you” ringing in his soul. He has 
no sense of a commission from God. When the jeerer 
asks him, “Who made you a prince and a judge over 
us ?” he has no answer. He is merely vexed and greatly 
embarrassed. 

How it is not easy to stay at a hard task without a 
sense of the divine presence. It is not easy to keep go¬ 
ing unless you feel yourself sent. It is God realized 
in your own life that gives you staying power. It is 
God seen in your task that makes most trying and diffi- 


198 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


cult work possible and even beautiful. That nurse toil¬ 
ing at her exhausting work has the secret. 

“Oh, how could I serve in the wards if the hope of the world 
were a lie? 

How could I endure the sights and the loathsome smell of 
disease 

But that He said, ‘Ye do it for me when ye do it for these.’ ” 

With this vision Moses would never have made this 
same tragic mistake. During these forty desert years 
he has died to his own self-esteem. “Who am I,” he 
says, “that I should deliver Israel ?” Then God speaks 
to him. “Certainly, I will be with thee.” It is not 
what you are but what God is. God can use the weak¬ 
est of instruments. He can even speak through a dry 
bush. It is not so much in the sword as the hand that 
wields the sword. 

God longed to go with Moses forty years ago, but He 
could not because Moses would not let Him. Moses did 
not feel that he needed Him. Moses was sufficient for 
the task himself. God cannot go with you unless you 
make room for Him. It is only those who feel their 
own utter insufficiency that have this promise: “Cer¬ 
tainly, I will be with thee.” 

Armed now with the divine presence and fortified by 
a sense of commission, Moses sets himself to his task. 
A lone man with a shepherd’s staff in his hand, he goes 
to invade the mightiest nation in the world. But he 
goes with the consciousness of the divine presence. He 
goes with the conviction that he is sent. When they 
ask him this time who sent him, he will not be dumb 
and ashamed. God has supplied him with an answer. 
“Tell them that I AM has sent you. Tell them that 
you have met your Master face to face and that He has 


THE UNDYING FIRE—MOSES 


199 


sent you. And I will give you a mouth and a wisdom 
that they cannot resist.” 

The opposition of forty years ago was as a grain of 
sand to a world in comparison with the opposition that 
he met upon his second effort. But he never faltered. 
He was opposed by his enemies. He was opposed by 
his friends. Members of his own household turned 
against him. It seems that never was there another 
crowd so unreasonable, so full of pettiness and stupid 
criticism as the one with which he had to deal. Diffi¬ 
culties were everywhere. But we read of him this 
fine word: ‘Tie endured.” How magnificent is that. 
Men misunderstood him, hut he endured. People 
failed to appreciate him, hut he endured. They criti¬ 
cized him unreasonably and unjustly, hut he endured. 
At times he made no progress, hut he endured. What 
is his secret? “He endured as seeing him who is in¬ 
visible.” He was sustained by the power of the God 
who had revealed himself to him through the burning 
bush. 

I was just reading recently an interesting article in 
the American Magazine , entitled, “Why I Quit the 
Ministry.” This man had quit for the very common¬ 
place reason that his salary was so meager. He saw no 
way to educate his family, etc. In fact he made his 
reasons for quitting very clear, but he left his reasons 
for entering the ministry as dim as the shadow of a 
dream. In fact, the only reason that he became a 
preacher was because he overheard a good old saint say 
on one occasion that he was- a fine boy and ought to 
preach. Entering the ministry for such a flimsy reason, 
no wonder it took no very colossal reason to force him 
to quit. Ho wonder the fire of his own kindling went 
out so easy. It is only God who gives us power to 


200 MORE SERMONS ON BIBLICAL CHARACTERS 


endure. “Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and 
the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait 
upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” 

And now God is saying to you what He said to 
Moses: “Come, now I will send thee to Pharaoh.” 
Every man is born into the world with a Pharaoh on 
his hands. Have you ever found yours ? Have you 
ever met yours and fought him till he set his slaves 
free? Have you battled with him till his corpse has 
been left sprawled upon the seashore ? Have you found 
your task and are you in the strength of God under¬ 
taking to do it ? 

I am not telling you where your Pharaoh is. I am 
not telling you just what particular mission God has 
given to you, but this I know. It is the part of help¬ 
ing and not of hindering. It is the part of ministering 
and not of being ministered unto. It is the part of 
working and not of idling. It is the part of playing 
the game and not of standing upon the side lines and 
criticizing. 

“How I will send thee.” God wants you now. If 
you are an old body, he wants the last day of your 
life. If you are a child He wants you from your cradle 
to your grave. “How I will send thee.” If you put 
yourself in His hands and go with the sense of His 
presence you will not go in vain. Life becomes trans¬ 
figured with light and with victory for that man who 
can look up from his duty, whether large or small, and 
sav: “To this end was I bom and for this cause came 

t/ 

I into the world, that I might do this bit of work for 
God.” May you have this blessed conviction from this 
day forward. % 


THE END 




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